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PRINCETON,  N.  J. 


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Division  X3  I— •    •C)  I O 

Number  V,    „<_ 


THE   GOLDEN   BOUGH 


THE 

GOLDEN    BOUGH 

A    STUDY 
IN    COMPARATIVE    RELIGION 


V 

J.    G.    FRAZER,    M.A. 

FELLOW    OF    TRINITY    COLLEGE,    CAMBRIDGE 


IN   TWO   VOLUMES 
VOL.   II 


MACMILLAN    AND    CO. 

AND     LONDON 
1894 

^11  rights  rtser-ved 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  III   {continued) 


KILLING    THE    GOD,    pp.    1-2  2  2 


lo.  The  corn-spirit  as  an  animal 

I 

II.  Eating  the  god          .... 

.     67 

12.  Killing  the  divine  animal     . 

.     90 

13.  Transference  of  evil 

.  148 

14.  Expulsion  of  evils     .... 

.•157 

15.  Scapegoats    ..... 

.  182 

16.  Killing  the  god  in  Mexico   . 

.  218 

CHAPTER  IV 


THE    GOLDEN    BOUGH,    pp.    2  2  3-3  7  I 


1.  Between  heaven  and  earth  . 

2.  Balder 

3.  The  external  soul  in  folk-tales 

4.  The  external  soul  in  folk-custom 

5.  Conclusion     . 


223 

244 
296 

327 
359 


NOTE 


Offerings  of  first-fruits 
Index 


373 
38s 


CHAPTER    III  —{continued) 

\  lo. —  The  corn-sph'ii  as  an  animal 

In  some  of  the  examples  cited  above  to  establish 
the  meaning  of  the  term  "  neck  "  as  applied  to  the  last 
sheaf,  the  corn -spirit  appears  in  animal  form  as  a 
gander,  a  goat,  a  hare,  a  cat,  and  a  fox.  This  intro- 
duces us  to  a  new  aspect  of  the  corn-spirit,  which  we 
must  now  examine.  By  doing  so  we  shall  not  only 
have  fresh  examples  of  killing  the  god,  but  may  hope 
also  to  clear  up  some  points  which  remain  obscure  in 
the  myths  and  worship  of  Attis,  Adonis,  Osiris, 
Dionysus,  Demeter,  and  Virbius. 

Amongst  the  many  animals  whose  forms  the  corn- 
spirit  is  supposed  to  take  are  the  wolf,  dog,  hare,  cock, 
goose,  cat,  goat,  cow  (ox,  bull),  pig,  and  horse.  In 
one  or  other  of  these  forms  the  'corn-spirit  is  believed 
to  be  present  in  the  corn,  and  to  be  caught  or  killed  in 
the  last  sheaf.  As  the  corn  is  being  cut  the  animal 
flees  before  the  reapers,  and  if  a  reaper  is  taken  ill 
on  the  field,  he  is  supposed  to  have  stumbled  un- 
wittingly on  the  corn-spirit,  who  has  thus  punished  the 
profane  intruder.  It  is  said  "  The  Rye-wolf  has  got  hold 
of  him,"  "the  Harvest-goat  has  given  him  a  push." 
The  person  who  cuts  the  last  corn  or  binds  the 
last  sheaf  gets  the  name  of  the  animal,  as  the  Rye- 

"      VOL.   II  B 


THE  CORN-SPIRIT 


wolf,  the  Rye-sow,  the  Oats-goat,  etc.,  and  retains  the 
name  sometimes  for  a  year.  Also  the  animal  is  fre- 
quently represented  by  a  puppet  made  out  of  the  last 
sheaf  or  of  wood,  flowers,  etc.,  which  is  carried  home 
amid  rejoicings  on  the  last  harvest  waggon.  Even 
where  the  last  sheaf  is  not  made  up  in  animal  shape,  it 
is  often  called  the  Rye- wolf,  the  Hare,  Goat,  and  so  on. 
Generally  each  kind  of  crop  is  supposed  to  have  its 
special  animal,  which  is  caught  in  the  last  sheaf,  and 
called  the  Rye -wolf,  the  Barley -wolf,  the  Oats -wolf, 
the  Pea- wolf,  or  the  Potato -wolf,  according  to  the 
crop  ;  but  sometimes  the  figure  of  the  animal  is  only 
made  up  once  for  all  at  getting  in  the  last  crop  of  the 
whole  harvest.  Sometimes  the  animal  is  believed  to 
be  killed  by  the  last  stroke  of  the  sickle  or  scythe. 
But  oftener  it  is  thought  to  live  so  long  as  there  is 
corn  still  unthreshed,  and  to  be  caught  in  the  last  sheaf 
threshed.  Hence  the  man  who  gives  the  last  stroke 
with  the  flail  is  told  that  he  has  got  the  Corn-sow, 
the  Threshing-dog,  etc.  When  the  threshing  is 
finished,  a  puppet  is  made  in  the  form  of  the  animal, 
and  this  is  carried  by  the  thresher  of  the  last  sheaf  to 
a  neighbouring  farm,  where  the  threshing  is  still  going 
on.  This  again  shows  that  the  corn-spirit  is  believed 
to  live  wherever  the  corn  is  still  being  threshed. 
Sometimes  the  thresher  of  the  last  sheaf  himself  repre- 
sents the  animal ;  and  if  the  people  of  the  next  farm, 
who  are  still  threshing,  catch  him,  they  treat  him 
like  the  animal  he  represents,  by  shutting  him  up  in 
the  pig  -  sty,  calling  him  with  the  cries  commonly 
addressed  to  pigs,  and  so  forth. ^ 

These  general  statements  will   now  be  illustrated 
by  examples.      We   begin   with   the   corn -spirit   con- 

1  W.  Mannhardt,  Die  Komddmomn^  pp.  i-6. 


AS  A  DOG  OR  WOLF 


cefved  as  a  wolf  or  a  dog.  This  conception  is 
common  in  France,  Germany,  and  Slavonic  coun- 
tries. Thus,  when  the  wind  sets  the  corn  in  wave- 
like motion,  the  peasants  often  say,  "The  Wolf 
is  going  over,  or  through,  the  corn,"  "  the  Rye -wolf 
is  rushing  over  the  field,"  "  the  Wolf  is  in  the  corn," 
"  the   mad    Dog  is    in   the    corn,"   "  the  bio-    Doe    is 

1  )  o  o 

there.'  ^  When  children  wish  to  go  into  the  corn- 
fields to  pluck  ears  or  gather  the  blue  corn-flowers, 
they  are  warned  not  to  do  so,  for  "the  big  Dog  sits 
in  the  corn,"  or  "  the  Wolf  sits  in  the  corn,  and  will 
tear  you  in  pieces,"  "the  Wolf  will  eat  you."  The 
wolf  against  whom  the  children  are  warned  is  not 
a  common  wolf,  for  he  is  often  spoken  of  as  the 
Corn-wolf,  Rye-wolf,  etc.  ;  thus  they  say,  "The  Rye- 
wolf  will  come  and  eat  you  up,  children,"  "the  Rye- 
wolf  will  carry  you  off,"  and  so  forth.^  Still  he  has  all 
the  outward  appearance  of  a  wolf.  For  in  the  neigh- 
bourhood of  Feilenhof  (East  Prussia),  when  a  wolf 
was  seen  running  through  a  field,  the  peasants  used  to 
watch  whether  he  carried  his  tail  in  the  air  or 
dragged  it  on  the  ground.  If  he  dragged  it  on  the 
ground,  they  went  after  him,  and  thanked  him  for 
bringing  them  a  blessing,  and  even  set  tit-bits  before 
him.  But  if  he  carried  his  tail  high,  they  cursed  him 
and  tried  to  kill  him.  Here  the  wolf  is  the  corn- 
spirit,  whose  fertilising  power  is  in  his  tail.^ 

Both  dog  and  wolf  appear  as  embodiments  of  the 
corn-spirit  in   harvest-customs.     Thus  in  some  parts 


1  W.    Mannhardt,    Rcggenwolf  tmd  "■■  W.  Mannhardt,  Roggenwolfii.  Rog- 

Roggenhund  (Danzig,  1865),  p.  5  ;  id.,  gaikimd,   p.  7  sqq.  ;  id.,   A.  W.  F.  p. 

A7itike  Wald-imd  Feldkulte,  p.  318  j-^.;  319. 

id.,    Mythol.    Forsch.    p.    103  ;    Witz-  3   w.  IMannhardt,  Roggenwolf,  etc.  p. 

schel,  Sagen,  Sit  ten  tmd  Gebrduche  mis  10. 
Thiiringejt,  p.  213. 


THE  CORN-SPIRIT 


of  Silesia  the  person  who  binds  the  last  sheaf  is 
called  the  Wheat-dog  or  the  Peas-pug/  But  it 
is  in  the  harvest-customs  of  the  north-east  of  France 
that  the  idea  of  the  Corn -dog  comes  out  most 
clearly.  Thus  when  a  harvester,  through  sickness, 
w^eariness,  or  laziness,  cannot  or  will  not  keep  up  with 
the  reaper  in  front  of  him,  they  say,  "  The  White 
Dog  passed  near  him,"  "he  has  the  White  Bitch,"  or 
"the  White  Bitch  has  bitten  him."  ^  In  the  Vosges 
the  Harvest- May  is  called  the  "Dog  of  the  har- 
vest."^ About  Lons-le-Saulnier,  in  the  Jura,  the 
last  sheaf  is  called  the  Bitch.  In  the  neighbourhood 
of  Verdun  the  regular  expression  for  finishing  the 
reaping  is,  "They  are  going  to  kill  the  Dog;"  and 
at  Epinal  they  say,  according  to  the  crop,  "  We  will 
kill  the  Wheat-dog,  or  the  Rye-dog,  or  the  Potato- 
dog."*  In  Lorraine  it  is  said  of  the  man  who  cuts  the 
last  corn,  "  He  is  killing  the  Dog  of  the  harvest."^ 
At  Dux,  in  the  Tyrol,  the  man  who  gives  the  last 
stroke  at  threshing  is  said  to  "  strike  down  the  Dog;"'' 
and  at  Ahnebergen,  near  Stade,  he  is  called,  according 
to  the  crop,  Corn-pug,  Rye-pug,  Wheat-pug.^ 

So  with  the  wolf.  In  Germany  it  is  said  that  "  The 
Wolf  sits  in  the  last  sheaf."  ^  In  some  places  they  call 
out  to  the  reaper,  "  Beware  of  the  Wolf;"  or  they  say, 
"  He  is  chasing  the  Wolf  out  of  the  corn."^  The  last 
bunch  of  standing  corn  is  called  the  Wolf,  and  the 
man  who  cuts  it  "  has  the  Wolf"  The  last  sheaf  is 
also  called  the  Wolf ;  and  of  the  woman  who  binds 
it  they  say,  "  The  Wolf  is  biting  her,"   "  she  has  the 


1  W.  Mannhardl,  M.  F.  p.  104.  ■*  lb.  p.  105.                 ^  //'.  p.  30- 

2  Jb,  "  Il>.  pp.  30,   105.        "  y/;.  p.  105  sq, 

3  lb.  p.  104  sq.       On   the   Harvest-  *  A.  IV.  F.  p.  320  ;  Roi^gcnwolf,  p. 
May,  see  above,  vol.  i.  p.  68.  24.                      '-^  Roggenwolf,  p.  24. 


AS  A    WOLF 


Wolf,"  "she  must  fetch  the  Wolf"  (out  of  the  corn).^ 
Moreover,  she  is  herself  called  Wolf  and  has  to  bear 
the  name  for  a  whole  year  ;  sometimes,  according  to 
the  crop,  she  is  called  the  Rye -wolf  or  the  Potato- 
wolf."  In  the  island  of  Riigen  they  call  out  to  the 
woman  who  binds  the  last  sheaf,  "  You're  Wolf ; "  and 
when  she  comes  home  she  bites  the  lady  of  the  house 
and  the  stewardess,  for  which  she  receives  a  large 
piece  of  meat.  The  same  woman  may  be  Rye-wolf, 
Wheat-wolf,  and  Oats-wolf,  if  she  happens  to  bind  the 
last  sheaf  of  rye,  wheat,  and  oats.^  At  Buir,  in  the 
district  of  Cologne,  it  was  formerly  the  custom  to 
give  to  the  last  sheaf  the  shape  of  a  wolf.  It  was 
kept  in  the  barn  till  all  the  corn  was  threshed.  Then 
it  was  brought  to  the  farmer,  and  he  had  to  sprinkle 
it  with  beer  or  brandy.^  In  many  places  the  sheaf 
called  the  Wolf  is  made  up  in  human  form  and  dressed 
in  clothes.  This  indicates  a  confusion  between  the 
conceptions  of  the  corn  -  spirit  as  theriomorphic  (in 
animal  form)  and  as  anthropomorphic  (in  human 
form).^  Generally  the  Wolf  is  brought  home 
on  the  last  waggon,  with  joyful  cries. *^ 

Again,  the  Wolf  is  supposed  to  hide  himself 
amongst  the  cut  corn  in  the  granary,  until  he  is 
driven  out  of  the  last  bundle  by  the  strokes  of  the 
flail.  Hence  at  Wanzleben,  near  Magdeburg,  after 
the  threshing  the  peasants  go  in  procession,  leading 
by  a  chain  a  man,  who  is  enveloped  in  the  threshed  out 
straw  and  is  called  the  Wolf  He  represents  the 
corn -spirit  who  has  been  caught  escaping  from  the 
threshed  corn.     In  Trier  it  is  believed  that  the  Corn- 


1  Roggen-wolf,  p.  24,  •*  Roggemuolf,  p.  25.        ^  //'.  p.  26. 

2  lb.  p.  25.  <5  //;.  p.  26  ;  A.   W.  F.  p.  320. 

3  lb.  p.  28;  A.   IV.  F.  p.  320.  '   A.   W.  F.  p.  321. 


THE  CORN-SPIRIT 


wolf  is  killed  at  threshing.  The  men  thresh  the  last 
sheaf  till  it  is  reduced  to  chopped  straw.  In  this  way 
they  think  that  the  Corn-wolf  who  was  lurking  in  the 
last  sheaf,  has  been  certainly  killed.^ 

In  France  also  the  Corn -wolf  appears  at  harvest. 
Thus  they  call  out  to  the  reaper  of  the  last  corn, 
"  You  will  catch  the  Wolf."  Near  Chambery  they  form 
a  ring  round  the  last  standing  corn,  and  cry,  "  The 
Wolf  is  in  there."  In  Finisterre,  when  the  reaping 
draws  near  an  end,  the  harvesters  cry,  "  There  is 
the  Wolf ;  we  will  catch  him."  Each  takes  a  swath 
to  reap,  and  he  who  finishes  first  calls  out,  "  I've 
caught  the  Wolf."  ^  In  Guyenne,  when  the  last  corn 
has  been  reaped,  they  lead  a  wether  all  round  the 
field.  It  is  called  "  the  Wolf  of  the  field."  Its  horns 
are  decked  with  a  wreath  of  flowers  and  corn -ears, 
and  its  neck  and  body  are  also  encircled  with  gar- 
lands and  ribbons.  All  the  reapers  march,  singing, 
behind  it.  Then  it  is  killed  on  the  field.  In  this 
part  of  France  the  last  sheaf  is  called  the  cotijoulage, 
which,  in  the  patois,  means  a  wether.  Hence  the 
killing  of  the  wether  represents  the  death  of  the  corn- 
spirit,  considered  as  present  in  the  last  sheaf;  but 
two  different  conceptions  of  the  corn-spirit — as  a  wolf 
and  as  a  wether — are  mixed  up  together.^ 

Sometimes  it  appears  to  be  thought  that  the  Wolf, 
caught  in  the  last  corn,  lives  during  the  winter  in  the 
farmhouse,  ready  to  renew  his  activity  as  corn-spirit  in 
the  spring.  Hence  at  midwinter,  when  the  lengthening 
days  begin  to  herald  the  approach  of  spring,  the  Wolf 
makes  his  appearance  once  more.  In  Poland  a  man, 
with  a  wolf's  skin  thrown  over  his  head,  is  led  about 
at  Christmas  ;    or  a  stuffed  wolf  is   carried   about  by 

1  A.  IV.  F.  p.  321  sq.         2  ^.  ^,  /r.  p.  320.  3  A.  IV.  F.  p.  320  sq. 


Ill  AS  A  COCK  7 

persons  who  collect  money.^  There  are  facts  which 
point  to  an  old  custom  of  leading  about  a  man 
enveloped  in  leaves  and  called  the  Wolf,  while  his 
conductors  collected  money.^ 

Another  form  which  the  corn -spirit  often  assumes 
is  that  of  a  cock.  In  Austria  children  are  warned 
against  straying  in  the  corn-fields,  because  the  Corn- 
cock  sits  there,  and  will  peck  their  eyes  out.^  In 
North  Germany  they  say  that  "  the  Cock  sits  in 
the  last  sheaf ; "  and  at  cutting  the  last  corn  the 
reapers  cry,  "  Now  we  will  chase  out  the  Cock." 
When  it  is  cut  they  say,  "  We  have  caught  the  Cock." 
Then  a  cock  is  made  of  flowers,  fastened  on  a  pole, 
and  carried  home  by  the  reapers,  singing  as  they  go.* 
At  Braller,  in  Transylvania,  when  the  reapers  come  to 
the  last  patch  of  corn,  they  cry,  "  Here  we  shall  catch 
the  Cock."^  At  Fiirstenwalde,  when  the  last  sheaf  is 
about  to  be  bound,  the  master  lets  loose  a  cock,  which 
he  has  brought  in  a  basket,  and  lets  it  run  over  the 
field.  All  the  harvesters  chase  it  till  they  catch  it. 
Elsewhere  the  harvesters  all  try  to  seize  the  last 
corn  cut  ;  he  who  succeeds  in  grasping  it  must  crow, 
and  is  called  Cock.^  The  last  sheaf  is  called  Cock, 
Cock-sheaf,  Harvest-cock,  Harvest-hen,  Autumn-hen. 
A  distinction  is  made  between  a  Wheat-cock,  Bean- 
cock,  etc.,  according  to  the  crop.^  At  Wiinschensuhl, 
in  Thiiringen,  the  last  sheaf  is  made  into  the  shape  of 
acock,  and  called  Harvest-cock.^     A  figure  of  a  cock. 


^  A.  W.  F.  p.  322.          2  //'.  p.  323.  ^  G.  A.  Heinrich,  Agrarische  Sitten 

3  Die  Korndiimonen,  p.   13.  tind    Gebrduche     unter     den     Sachsen 

*  lb.;  Sch.ra\X.z,  Sitten  und  Sagen  des  Siebenbiirgens,  p.  21. 

EiJlerVolkes,i.'p.gi,;'K.\x\\i\,lVestfdlische  ^  Die   Kornddi/ioneti,    p.    13.       Cp. 

Sagen,   Mdrchen  und  Gebrduche,  ii.  p.  Kuhn  and  Schwartz,  I.e. 

181 ;  Kuhn  und  Schwartz,  Norddeutsche  ''  Die  Korndd/nonen,  p.  13. 

Sagen,    Aldrchen    und    Gebrduche,    p.  *  Witzschel,  Sagen,  Sitten  und  Ge- 

398.  brdiiche  aus  Thiiringen,  p.  220. 


THE  CORN-SPIRIT 


made  of  wood,  pasteboard,  or  ears  of  corn,  is  borne  in 
front  of  the  harvest-waggon,  especially  in  Westphalia, 
where  the  cock  carries  in  his  beak  fruits  of  the  earth 
of  all  kinds.  Sometimes  the  image  of  the  cock  is 
fastened  to  the  top  of  a  May-tree  on  the  last  harvest- 
waggon.  Elsewhere  a  live  cock,  or  a  figure  of  one,  is 
attached  to  a  harvest-crown  and  carried  on  a  pole.  In 
Galicia  and  elsewhere  this  live  cock  is  fastened  to  the 
garland  of  corn-ears  or  flowers,  which  the  leader  of  the 
women-reapers  carries  on  her  head  as  she  marches  in 
front  of  the  harvest  procession.^  In  Silesia  a  live 
cock  is  presented  to  the  master  on  a  plate.  The 
harvest  supper  is  called  Harvest-cock,  Stubble-cock, 
etc.,  and  a  chief  dish  at  it,  at  least  in  some  places,  is  a 
cock.^  If  a  waggoner  upsets  a  harvest -waggon,  it  is 
said  that  "  he  has  spilt  the  Harvest-cock,"  and  he  loses 
the  cock — that  is,  the  harvest  supper.^  The  harvest- 
waggon,  with  the  figure  of  the  cock  on  it,  is  driven 
round  the  farmhouse  before  it  is  taken  to  the  barn. 
Then  the  cock  is  nailed  over,  or  at  the  side  of  the 
house  door,  or  on  the  gable,  and  remains  there  till 
next  harvest.*  In  East  Friesland  the  person  who 
gives  the  last  stroke  at  threshing  is  called  the 
Clucking-hen,  and  grain  is  strewed  before  him  as  if 
he  were  a  hen.^ 

Again,    the    corn -spirit    is   killed    in    the    form    of 


^  Die    Komddmonen,     p.     13    sq.',  overthrowing  a  load  at  harvest  is  "to 

Kwhn,  Westfdlische  Sage7t,  Miirchemtiid  lose  the  goose,"  and  the  penalty  used 

Gebraiiche,    ii.    p.    180   sq.;     Pfannen-  to  be  the  loss  of  the  goose  at  the  harvest 

%chm\(l,  Germa7iische  Erntefeste,  p.  no.  supper  (Burne  and  Jackson,  Shropshire 

2  DieKomdiimonm,  p.  14;  Pfannen-  ^f'^'^'^^  P;  375)  ;  and  in  some  parts 
schmid,  op.  cit.  pp.  1 1 .,  419  sq.  "^,  ^ngland    the    harvest    supper    was 

•'  called    the    Harvest    Uosling,    or    the 

3  Die  Komddmonen,  p.  15.      So  in  Inning   Goose   (Brand,   Popular  Anti- 
Shropshire,    where    the    corn -spirit    is  (/?<;V/fc'5,  ii.  23,  26,  Bohn's  ed.) 
conceived  in  the  form  of  a  gander  (see  *  Die  R'oriiddmonen,  p.  14. 
above,  vol.  i.  p.  407),  the  expression  for  ^  lb.  p.  15. 


Ill  AS  A  COCK  9 

a  cock.  In  parts  of  Germany,  Hungary,  Poland, 
and  Picardy,  the  reapers  place  a  live  cock  in  the 
corn  which  is  to  be  cut  last,  and  chase  it  over  the 
field,  or  bury  it  up  to  the  neck  in  the  ground  ;  after- 
wards they  strike  off  its  head  with  a  sickle  or 
scythe.^  In  many  parts  of  Westphalia,  when  the 
harvesters  bring  the  wooden  cock  to  the  farmer,  he 
gives  them  a  live  cock,  which  they  kill  with  whips 
or  sticks,  or  behead  with  an  old  sword,  or  throw  it 
into  the  barn  to  the  girls,  or  give  it  to  the  mistress 
to  cook.  If  the  Harvest -cock  has  not  been  spilt — 
that  is,  if  no  waggon  has  been  upset — the  harvesters 
have  the  right  of  killing  the  farmyard  cock  by 
throwing  stones  at  it  or  beheading  it.  Where  this 
custom  has  fallen  into  disuse,  it  is  still  common 
for  the  farmer's  wife  to  make  cockie  -  leekie  for 
the  harvesters,  and  to  show  them  the  head  of 
the  cock  which  has  been  killed  for  the  soup.^  In 
the  neighbourhood  of  Klausenburg,  Transylvania,  a 
cock  is  buried  on  the  harvest- field  in  the  earth,  so 
that  only  its  head  appears.  A  young  man  then  takes 
a  scythe  and  cuts  off  the  cock's  head  at  a  single 
stroke.  If  he  fails  to  do  this,  he  is  called  the  Red 
Cock  for  a  whole  year,  and  people  fear  that  next 
year's  crop  will  be  bad.'^  In  the  neighbourhood  of 
Udvarhely,  Transylvania,  a  live  cock  is  bound  up 
in  the  last  sheaf  and  killed  with  a  spit.  It  is 
then  skinned.  The  flesh  is  thrown  away,  but  the 
skin  and  feathers  are  kept  till  next  year ;  and  in 
spring  the  grain  from  the  last  sheaf  is  mixed  with 
the  feathers  of  the  cock  and  scattered  on  the  field 
which  is  to  be  tilled.^     Nothing  could  set  in  a  clearer 

1  M.  F.  p.  30.  3  //,.  p,  15  j.^, 

2  j)ig  Korndiwtonen,  p.  15.  ■*  lb.  p.  15  ;  M.  F.  p.  30, 


THE  CORN-SPIRIT 


light  the  identification  of  the  cock  with  the  spirit  of 
the  corn.  By  being  tied  up  in  the  last  sheaf  and 
killed,  the  cock  is  identified  with  the  corn,  and  its 
death  with  the  cutting  of  the  corn.  By  keeping  its 
feathers  till  spring,  then  mixing  them  with  the  seed- 
corn  taken  from  the  very  sheaf  in  which  the  bird  had 
been  bound,  and  scattering  the  feathers  together  with 
the  seed  over  the  field,  the  identity  of  the  bird  with 
the  corn  is  again  emphasised,  and  its  quickening  and 
fertilising  power,  as  the  corn-spirit,  is  intimated  in  the 
plainest  manner.  Thus  the  corn -spirit,  in  the  form  of 
a  cock,  is  killed  at  harvest,  but  rises  to  fresh  life  and 
activity  in  spring.  Again,  the  equivalence  of  the  cock 
to  the  corn  is  expressed,  hardly  less  plainly,  in  the 
custom  of  burying  the  bird  in  the  ground,  and  cutting 
off  its  head  (like  the  ears  of  corn)  with  the  scythe. 

Another  common  embodiment  of  the  corn-spirit  is 
the  hare.^  In  some  parts  of  Ayrshire  the  cutting  of 
the  last  corn  is  called  "  cutting  the  Hare  ;  "  ^  and  in 
Germany  a  name  for  the  last  sheaf  is  the  Hare.^  In 
East  Prussia  they  say  that  the  Hare  sits  in  the  last 
patch  of  standing  corn,  and  must  be  chased  out  by  the 
last  reaper.  The  reapers  hurry  with  their  work,  each 
being  anxious  not  to  have  "to  chase  out  the  Hare  ;" 
for  the  man  who  does  so,  that  is,  who  cuts  the  last 
corn,  is  much  laughed  at.^  At  Birk  in  Transylvania, 
when  the  reapers  come  to  the  last  patch,  they  cry  out, 
"  We  have  the  Hare."  ^  At  Aurich,  as  we  have  seen,^ 
an  expression  for  cutting  the  last  corn  is  "to  cut 
off  the  Hare's   tail."       "  He  is   killing  the   Hare  "   is 

^  Die  Kornddmonm,  p.  i.  ^  G.  A.  Heinrich,  Agrarische  Sitten 

2  Folk-lore  Journal,  vii.  47.  tnid     Gebrdnche    nnter     den    Sachsen 

^  Die  Kornddinonen,  p.  3.  Sicbcnbiirgens,  p.  21. 

■•  Lemke,     Volksthiimliches  in    Ost-  **  Above,  vol.  i.  p.  40S. 

preussen,  i.  24. 


Ill  AS  A  HARE  OR  CAT  ii 

commonly  said  of  the  man  who  cuts  the  last  corn 
in  Germany,  Sweden,  Holland,  France,  and  Italy. ^ 
In  Norway  the  man  who  is  thus  said  to  "  kill  the 
Hare"  must  give  "  hare's  blood,"  in  the  form  of  brandy, 
to  his  fellows  to  drink."  ^ 

Again,  the  corn-spirit  sometimes  takes  the  form  of 
a  cat.^  Near  Kiel  children  are  warned  not  to  go  into 
the  corn-fields  because  "  the  Cat  sits  there."  In  the 
Eisenach  Oberland  they  are  told  "  the  Corn-cat  will 
come  and  fetch  you,"  "  the  Corn-cat  goes  in  the  corn." 
In  some  parts  of  Silesia  at  mowing  the  last  corn  they 
say,  "  the  Cat  is  caught  ; "  and  at  threshing,  the  man 
who  gives  the  last  stroke  is  called  the  Cat.  In  the 
neighbourhood  of  Lyons  the  last  sheaf  and  the  harvest 
supper  are  both  called  the  Cat.  About  Vesoul  when 
they  cut  the  last  corn  they  say,  "  We  have  the  Cat 
by  the  tail."  At  Brian9on,  in  Dauphine,  at  the 
beginning  of  reaping,  a  cat  is  decked  out  with  ribbons, 
flowers,  and  ears  of  corn.  It  is  called  the  Cat  of 
the  ball-skin  [le  chat  de  peau  de  balle).  If  a  reaper 
is  wounded  at  his  work,  they  make  the  cat  lick  the 
wound.  At  the  close  of  the  reaping  the  cat  is  again 
decked  out  with  ribbons  and  ears  of  corn  ;  then  there 
is  dancing  and  merriment.  When  the  dance  is  over, 
the  cat  is  solemnly  stripped  of  its  ornaments  by  the 
girls.  At  Griineberg  in  Silesia  the  reaper  who  cuts 
the  last  corn  is  called  the  Tom-cat.  He  is  enveloped 
in  rye -stalks  and  green  withes,  and  is  furnished  with 
a  long  plaited  tail.  Sometimes  as  a  companion  he  has 
a  man  similarly  dressed,  who  is  called  the  (female)  Cat. 
Their  duty  is  to  run  after  people  whom  they  see 
and  beat  them  with  a  long  stick.      Near  Amiens  the 

1  M.  F.  p.  29.  2  M.  F.  p.  29  sq. ;  Die  Korndamonen,  p.  5. 

3  A.  IV.  F.  pp.  172-174;  M.  F.  p.  30. 


12  THE  CORN-SPIRIT  chap. 

expression  for  finishing  the  harvest  is,  "  They  are 
going  to  kill  the  Cat ;  "  and  when  the  last  corn  is 
cut  a  cat  is  killed  in  the  farmyard.  At  threshing, 
in  some  parts  of  France,  a  live  cat  is  placed  under  the 
last  bundle  of  corn  to  be  threshed,  and  is  struck  dead 
with  the  flails.  Then  on  Sunday  it  is  roasted  and 
eaten  as  a  holiday  dish. 

Further,  the  corn-spirit  often  appears  in  the  form  of 
a  goat.  In  the  province  of  Prussia,  when  the  corn 
bends  before  the  wind,  they  say,  "  The  Goats  are 
chasing  each  other,"  "  the  wind  is  driving  the  Goats 
through  the  corn,"  "  the  Goats  are  browsing  there,"  and 
they  expect  a  very  good  harvest.  Again  they  say, 
"the  Oats-goat  is  sitting  in  the  oats-field,"  "the  Corn- 
goat  is  sitting  in  the  rye-field."  ^  Children  are  warned 
not  to  go  into  the  corn-fields  to  pluck  the  blue  corn- 
flowers, or  amongst  the  beans  to  pluck  pods,  because 
the  Rye-goat,  the  Corn-goat,  the  Oats-goat,  or  the 
Bean-goat  is  sitting  or  lying  there,  and  will  carry  them 
away  or  kill  them.^  When  a  harvester  is  taken  sick  or 
lags  behind  his  fellows  at  their  work,  they  call  out,  "The 
Harvest-goat  has  pushed  him,"  "  he  has  been  pushed 
by  the  Corn-goat. "^  In  the  neighbourhood  of  Brauns- 
berg  (East  Prussia)  at  binding  the  oats  every  harvester 
makes  haste  "lest  the  Corn-goat  push  him."  At 
Oefoten  in  Norway  each  harvester  has  his  allotted 
patch  to  reap.  When  a  harvester  in  the  middle  has 
not  finished  reaping  his  piece  after  his  neighbours  have 
finished  theirs,  they  say  of  him,  "  He  remains  on  the 
island."  And  if  the  laggard  is  a  man,  they  imitate  the 
cry  with  which  they  call  a  he  -  goat ;  if  a  woman,  the 
cry  with  which  they  call  a  she-goat.*     Near  Straubing 

1  W.    Mannhardt,    A.     W.     F.     p.  3  //,.  p.  j^g. 

155  sq.  2  lb.  p.   157  sq.  *  lb.  p.   161  sq. 


Ill  AS  A   GOAT  13 

in  Lower  Bavaria,  it  is  said  of  the  man  who  cuts 
the  last  corn  that  "  he  has  the  Corn -goat  or  the 
Wheat-goat,  or  the  Oats-goat,"  according  to  the  crop. 
Moreover,  two  horns  are  set  up  on  the  last  heap  of 
corn,  and  it  is  called  "  the  horned  Goat."  At  Kreutz- 
burg,  East  Prussia,  they  call  out  to  the  woman  who  is 
binding:  the  last  sheaf,  "  The  Goat  is  sitting:  in  the 
sheaf."  ^  At  Gablingen  in  Swabia,  when  the  last  field 
of  oats  upon  a  farm  is  being  reaped,  the  reapers  carve 
a  goat  out  of  wood.  Ears  of  oats  are  inserted  in  its 
nostrils  and  mouth,  and  it  is  adorned  with  garlands 
of  flowers.  It  is  set  upon  the  field  and  called  the 
Oats -goat.  When  the  reaping  approaches  an  end, 
each  reaper  hastens  to  finish  his  piece  first ;  he  who 
is  the  last  to  finish  gets  the  Oats-goat.^  Again,  the 
last  sheaf  is  itself  called  the  Goat.  Thus,  in  the  valley 
of  the  Wiesent,  Bavaria,  the  last  sheaf  bound  on  the 
field  is  called  the  Goat,  and  they  have  a  proverb,  "  The 
field  must  bear  a  goat.^  At  Spachbriicken  in  Hesse, 
the  last  handful  of  corn  which  is  cut  is  called  the  Goat, 
and  the  man  who  cuts  it  is  much  ridiculed.^  Some- 
times the  last  sheaf  is  made  up  in  the  form  of  a  goat,^ 
and  they  say,  "The  Goat  is  sitting  in  it."  Again, 
the  person  who  cuts  or  binds  the  last  sheaf  is  called 
the  Goat.  Thus,  in  parts  of  Mecklenburg  they  call 
out  to  the  woman  who  binds  the  last  sheaf,  "  You 
are  the  Harvest-goat."  In  the  neighbourhood  of  Uel- 
zen  in  Hanover,  the  harvest  festival  begins  with  "  the 
bringing  of  the  Harvest-goat ; "  that  is,  the  woman 
who  bound  the  last  sheaf  is  wrapt  in  straw,  crowned 
with  a  harvest-wreath,  and  brought  in  a  wheelbarrow 

1  W.  Mannhardt,  A.  IV.  F.  p.   162.  3  Panzer,  op.  at.   ii.  p.    22S  sq.  No. 

2  Panzer,      Beitrag     zur     deiitschen  422  ;  A.  W.  F.  p.   163. 
Mythologie,    ii.    p.    232  sq.    No.    426;  *  A.  IV.  F.  p.   163. 
A.  IV.  F.  p.  162.  ^  //^  p.  164. 


14  THE  CORN-SPIRIT  chap. 

to  the  village,  where  a  round  dance  takes  place. 
About  Liineburg,  also,  the  woman  who  binds  the  last 
corn  is  decked  with  a  crown  of  corn-ears  and  is  called 
the  Corn-goat/  In  the  Canton  St.  Gall,  Switzer- 
land, the  person  who  cuts  the  last  handful  of  corn  on 
the  field,  or  drives  the  last  harvest-waggon  to  the  barn, 
is  called  the  Corn-goat  or  the  Rye-goat,  or  simply  the 
Goat-  In  the  Canton  Thurgau  he  is  called  Corn- 
goat  ;  like  a  goat  he  has  a  bell  hung  round  his  neck,  is 
led  in  triumph,  and  drenched  with  liquor.  In  parts  of 
Styria,  also,  the  man  who  cuts  the  last  corn  is  called 
Corn -goat,  Oats -goat,  etc.  As  a  rule,  the  man  who 
thus  gets  the  name  of  Corn-goat  has  to  bear  it  a  whole 
year  till  the  next  harvest.^ 

According  to  one  view,  the  corn -spirit,  who  has 
been  caught  in  the  form  of  a  goat  or  otherwise,  lives 
in  the  farmhouse  or  barn  over  winter.  Thus,  each 
farm  has  its  own  embodiment  of  the  corn-spirit.  But, 
according  to  another  view,  the  corn-spirit  is  the  genius 
or  deity,  not  of  the  corn  of  one  farm  only,  but  of  all 
the  corn.  Hence  when  the  corn  on  one  farm  is  all  cut, 
he  flees  to  another  where  there  is  still  corn  left  stand- 
ing. This  idea  is  brought  out  in  a  harvest- custom 
which  was  formerly  observed  in  Skye.  The  farmer 
who  first  finished  reaping  sent  a  man  or  woman  with  a 
sheaf  to  a  neighbouring  farmer  who  had  not  finished  ; 
the  latter  in  his  turn,  when  he  had  finished,  sent  on  the 
sheaf  to  his  neighbour  who  was  still  reaping ;  and  so 
the  sheaf  made  the,  round  of  the  farms  till  all  the  corn 
was  cut.  The  sheaf  was  called  the  zoabbir  bkacao-fL 
that  is,  the  Cripple  Goat.*  The  corn-spirit  was  prob- 
ably thus   represented  as  lame  because   he  had  been 

1  A.   IV.  F.  p.  164.  2  ji,   p    1 5^  ^q^  3  //;   p    i5^_ 

■•  lirand,  Popular  Autiqtiitics,  ii.  24,  Bohn's  ed.  ;  A.   W.  F.  p.  165. 


Ill  AS  A  GOAT  15 

crippled  by  the  cutting  of  the  corn.  We  have  seen 
that  sometimes  the  old  woman  who  brings  home  the 
last  sheaf  must  limp  on  one  foot.^  In  the  Bohmer 
Wald  mountains,  between  Bohemia  and  Bavaria,  when 
two  peasants  are  driving  home  their  corn  together, 
they  race  against  each  other  to  see  who  shall  get 
home  first.  The  village  boys  mark  the  loser  in  the 
race,  and  at  night  they  come  and  erect  on  the  roof  of 
his  house  the  Oats-goat,  which  is  a  colossal  figure  of  a 
goat  made  of  straw." 

But  sometimes  the  corn-spirit,  in  the  form  of  a 
goat,  is  believed  to  be  slain  on  the  harvest- field  by 
the  sickle  or  scythe.  Thus,  in  the  neighbourhood  of 
Bernkastel,  on  the  Moselle,  the  reapers  determine  by 
lot  the  order  in  which  they  shall  follow  each  other. 
The  first  is  called  the  fore -reaper,  the  last  the  tail- 
bearer.  If  a  reaper  overtakes  the  man  in  front  he 
reaps  past  him,  bending  round  so  as  to  leave  the 
slower  reaper  in  a  patch  by  himself.  This  patch  is 
called  the  Goat  ;  and  the  man  for  whom  "  the  Goat 
is  cut "  in  this  way,  is  laughed  and  jeered  at  by 
his  fellows  for  the  rest  of  the  day.  When  the  tail- 
bearer  cuts  the  last  ears  of  corn,  it  is  said  "  He  is 
cutting  the  Goat's  neck  off"^  In  the  neighbourhood 
of  Grenoble,  before  the  end  of  the  reaping,  a  live  goat 
is  adorned  with  flowers  and  ribbons  and  allowed  to  run 
about  the  field.  The  reapers  chase  it  and  try  to  catch 
it.  When  it  is  caught,  the  farmer's  wife  holds  it  fast 
while  the  farmer  cuts  off  its  head.  The  goat's  flesh 
serves  to  furnish  the  harvest  supper.  A  piece  of  the 
flesh  is  pickled  and  kept  till  the  next  harvest,  when 
another  goat  is   killed.     Then  all  the  harvesters  eat 

1  Above,  vol.  i.  p.  380.  2  ^_   iy_  /r_  p_  ^(,^^ 

3  A.   W.  F.  p.  166;  M.  F.  p.  185. 


1 6  THE  CORN-SPIRIT 


of  the  flesh.  On  the  same  day  the  skin  of  the  goat  is 
made  into  a  cloak,  which  the  farmer,  who  works  with 
his  men,  must  always  wear  at  harvest-time  if  rain  or 
bad  weather  sets  in.  But  if  a  reaper  gets  pains  in  his 
back,  the  farmer  gives  him  the  goat- skin  to  wear.^ 
The  reason  for  this  seems  to  be  that  the  pains  in 
the  back,  being  inflicted  by  the  corn-spirit,  can  also  be 
healed  by  it.  Similarly  we  saw  that  elsewhere,  when 
a  reaper  is  wounded  at  reaping,  a  cat,  as  the  repre- 
sentative of  the  corn-spirit,  is  made  to  lick  the  wound.^ 
Esthonian  reapers  in  the  island  of  Mon  think  that  the 
man  who  cuts  the  first  ears  of  corn  at  harvest  will  get 
pains  in  his  back,^ — probably  because  the  corn-spirit  is 
believed  to  resent  especially  the  first  wound ;  and,  in 
order  to  escape  pains  in  the  back,  Saxon  reapers  in 
Transylvania  gird  their  loins  with  the  first  handful 
of  ears  which  they  cut.^  Here,  again,  the  corn-spirit 
is  applied  to  for  healing  or  protection,  but  in  his 
original  vegetable  form,  not  in  the  form  of  a  goat 
or  a  cat. 

Further,  the  corn-spirit  under  the  form  of  a  goat  is 
sometimes  conceived  as  lurking  among  the  cut  corn  in 
the  barn,  till  he  is  driven  from  it  by  the  threshing-flail. 
For  example,  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Marktl  in 
Upper  Bavaria  the  sheaves  are  called  Straw-goats  or 
simply  Goats.  They  are  laid  in  a  great  heap  on  the 
open  field  and  threshed  by  two  rows  of  men  standing 
opposite  each  other,  who,  as  they  ply  their  flails,  sing  a 
song  in  which  they  say  that  they  see  the  Straw-goat 
amonest  the  corn-stalks.  The  last  Goat,  that  is,  the 
last  sheaf,  is  adorned  with  a  wreath  of  violets  and  other 


1  A.   W.  F.  p.  1 66.  *  G.  A.  Heinrich,  Agrarische  Sitten 

2  Above,  p.   II.  «•  Gcbrimche  iintcr  den  Sachsen  Sieben- 

3  Holzmayer,  Osiliana,  p.   107.  biirgcns,  p.  19.      Cp.  B.  K.  p.  482  sqq. 


in  AS  A    GOAT  17 

flowers  and  with  cakes  strung  together.  It  is  placed 
right  in  the  middle  of  the  heap.  Some  of  the  threshers 
rush  at  it  and  tear  the  best  of  it  out ;  others  lay  on 
with  their  flails  so  recklessly  that  heads  are  sometimes 
broken.  In  threshing  this  last  sheaf,  each  man  casts 
up  to  the  man  opposite  him  the  misdeeds  of  which  he 
has  been  guilty  throughout  the  year.^  At  Oberinntal  in 
Tyrol  the  last  thresher  is  called  Goat.^  At  Tettnang 
in  Wurtemberg  the  thresher  who  gives  the  last  stroke 
to  the  last  bundle  of  corn  before  it  is  turned  goes  by  the 
name  of  the  He-goat,  and  it  is  said  "  he  has  driven  the 
He-goat  away."  The  person  who,  after  the  bundle 
has  been  turned,  gives  the  last  stroke  of  all,  is  called 
the  She-goat.^  In  this  custom  it  is  implied  that  the 
corn  is  inhabited  by  a  pair  of  corn -spirits,  male  and 
female.  Further,  the  corn-spirit,  captured  in  the  form 
of  a  goat  at  threshing,  is  passed  on  to  a  neighbour 
whose  threshing  is  not  yet  finished.  In  Franche  Comte, 
as  soon  as  the  threshing  is  over,  the  young  people  set 
up  a  straw  figure  of  a  goat  on  the  farmyard  of  a 
neighbour  who  is  still  threshing.  He  must  give  them 
wine  or  money  in  return.  At  Ellwangen  in  Wiirtem- 
berg  the  efiigy  of  a  goat  is  made  out  of  the  last  bundle 
of  corn  at  threshing  ;  four  sticks  form  its  legs,  and  two 
its  horns.  The  man  who  gives  the  last  stroke  with  the 
flail  must  carry  the  Goat  to  the  barn  of  a  neighbour 
who  is  still  threshing  and  throw  it  down  on  the  floor  ; 
if  he  is  caught  in  the  act,  they  tie  the  Goat  on  his  back.^ 
A  similar  custom  is  observed  at  Indersdorf  in  Upper 
Bavaria ;  the  man  who  throws  the  straw  Goat  into  the 
neighbour's  barn  imitates  the  bleating  of  a  goat ;  if  they 

1  Panzer,  Beitrag  ziir  deutscheii  3  £_  Meier,  Deutsche  Sagen,  Sitten 
Mythologie,  ii.  p.  225  sqq.  No.  421  ;  und  Geb7-dtuhe  aus  Schwahen,  p.  445, 
A.  W.  F.  p.  167  sq.                                      No.  162  ;  A.   W.  F.  p.  168. 

2  A.   W.  F.  p.  168.  4  A.   IV.  F.  p.  169. 

VOL.   II  C 


THE   CORN-SPIRIT 


catch  him  they  blacken  his  face  and  tie  the  Goat  on  his 
back.^  At  Zabern  in  Elsass,  when  a  farmer  is  a  week 
or  more  behind  his  neighbours  with  his  threshing, 
they  set  a  real  stuffed  goat  (or  fox)  before  his  door.^ 
Sometimes  the  spirit  of  the  corn  in  goat  form  is 
believed  to  be  killed  at  threshing.  In  the  district  of 
Traunstein,  Upper  Bavaria,  it  is  thought  that  the  Oats- 
goat  is  in  the  last  sheaf  of  oats.  He  is  represented  by 
an  old  rake  set  up  on  end,  with  an  old  pot  for  a  head. 
The  children  are  then  told  to  kill  the  Oats-goat.^  A 
stranger  passing  a  harvest -field  is  sometimes  taken 
for  the  Corn-goat  escaping  in  human  shape  from  the 
cut  or  threshed  grain.  Thus,  when  a  stranger  passes 
a  harvest-field,  all  the  labourers  stop  and  shout  as  with 
one  voice  "  He-goat!  He-goat!"  At  rape-seed  thresh- 
ing in  Schleswig,  which  generally  takes  place  on  the 
field,  the  same  cry  is  raised  if  the  stranger  does  not 
take  off  his  hat.* 

At  sowing  their  winter  corn  the  Prussian  Slavs 
used  to  kill  a  goat,  consume  its  flesh  with  many 
superstitious  ceremonies,  and  hang  the  skin  on  a  high 
pole  near  an  oak  and  a  large  stone.  Here  it  remained 
till  harvest.  Then,  after  a  prayer  had  been  offered  by 
a  peasant  who  acted  as  priest  {IVeidtcliit),  the  young 
folk  joined  hands  and  danced  round  the  oak  and  the 
pole.  Afterwards  they  scrambled  for  the  bunch  of  corn, 
and  the  priest  distributed  the  herbs  with  a  sparing 
hand.  Then  he  placed  the  goat -skin  on  the  large 
stone,  sat  down  on  it  and  preached  to  the  people  about 
the  history  of  their  forefathers  and  their  old  heathen 
customs  and  beliefs.^     The  goat-skin  thus  suspended 

1  Panzer,  op.  cit.  ii.  p.  224  sq.  No.  3  //;,  p.  170.  *  lb.  p.  170. 
420;  A  .IV.  F.  p.  169.                                    ^  Praeloi'ms,  Deh'dae  Frussicae, -p.  2^ 

2  J.  W.  F.  p.   169.  sq.  ;  B.  K.  p.  394  sq. 


ni  AS  AN  OX  19 

on  the  field  from  sowing  time  to  harvest  represents  the 
corn-spirit  superintending  the  growth  of  the  corn. 

Another  form  which  the  corn-spirit  often  assumes  is 
that  of  a  bull,  cow,  or  ox.  When  the  wind  sweeps 
over  the  corn  they  say  at  Conitz  in  West  Prussia,  "  The 
Steer  is  running  in  the  corn  ;  "  ^  when  the  corn  is  thick 
and  strong  in  one  spot,  they  say  in  some  parts  of  East 
Prussia,  "  The  Bull  is  lying  in  the  corn."  W^hen  a  har- 
vester has  overstrained  and  lamed  himself,  they  say  in 
the  Graudenz  district  (West  Prussia),  "  The  Bull  pushed 
him  ;"  in  Lothringen  they  say,  "He  has  the  Bull."  The 
meaning  of  both  expressions  is  that  he  has  unwittingly 
lighted  upon  the  divine  corn-spirit,  who  has  punished 
the  profane  intruder  with  lameness."  So  near  Cham- 
b^ry  when  a  reaper  wounds  himself  with  his  sickle,  it 
is  said  that  he  has  "  the  wound  of  the  Ox."  ^  In  the  dis- 
trict of  Bunzlau  the  last  sheaf  is  sometimes  made  into 
the  shape  of  a  horned  ox,  stuffed  with  tow  and  wrapt  in 
corn-ears.  This  figure  is  called  the  Old  Man  {der  Alte). 
In  some  parts  of  Bohemia  the  last  sheaf  is  made  up  in 
human  form  and  called  the  Buffalo-bull.*  These  cases 
show  a  confusion  between  the  anthropomorphic  and 
the  theriomorphic  conception  of  the  corn-spirit.  The 
confusion  is  parallel  to  that  of  killing  a  wether  under 
the  name  of  a  wolf^  In  the  Canton  of  Thureau, 
Switzerland,  the  last  sheaf,  if  it  is  a  large  one,  is  called 
the  Cow.^  All  over  Swabia  the  last  bundle  of  corn  on 
the  field  is  called  the  Cow  ;  the  man  who  cuts  the  last 
ears  "  has  the  Cow,"  and  is  himself  called  Cow  or 
Barley-cow  or  Oats-cow,  according  to  the  crop  ;  at  the 
harvest  supper  he  gets  a  nosegay  of  flowers  and  corn- 
ears  and  a  more  liberal  allowance  of  drink  than  the  rest. 

1  M.  F.  p.  58.  3  ,1/  p_  p.  62.  5  Above,  p.  6. 

2  lb.  *  M.  F.  p.  59.  6  M.  F.  p.  59. 


THE   CORN-SPIRIT 


But  he  is  teased  and  laughed  at  ;  so  no  one  Hkes  to  be 
the  Cow.^  The  Cow  was  sometimes  represented  by 
the  fio-ure  of  a  woman  made  out  of  ears  of  corn  and 
corn-flowers.  It  was  carried  to  the  farmhouse  by  the 
man  who  had  cut  the  last  handful  of  corn.  The  child- 
ren ran  after  him  and  the  neighbours  turned  out  to 
laugh  at  him,  till  the  farmer  took  the  Cow  from  him.'- 
Here  ao-ain  the  confusion  between  the  human  and  the 
animal  form  of  the  corn-spirit  is  apparent.  In  various 
parts  of  Switzerland  the  reaper  who  cuts  the  last  ears 
of  corn  is  called  Wheat -cow,  Corn -cow,  Oats -cow,  or. 
Corn-steer,  and  is  the  butt  of  many  a  joke.^  In  some 
parts  of  East  Prussia,  when  a  few  ears  of  corn 
have  been  left  standing  by  inadvertence  on  the  last 
swath,  the  foremost  reaper  seizes  them  and  cries, 
"  Bull !  Bull !  "^  On  the  other  hand,  in  the  district  of 
Rosenheim,  in  Upper  Bavaria,  when  a  farmer  is  later 
in  getting  in  his  harvest  than  his  neighbours,  they  set 
up  on  his  land  a  Straw-bull,  as  it  is  called.  This  is  a 
gigantic  figure  of  a  bull  made  of  stubble  on  a  frame- 
work of  wood  and  adorned  with  flowers  and  leaves. 
A  label  is  attached  to  it  containing  doggerel  verses  in 
ridicule  of  the  man  on  whose  land  the  Straw-bull  is 
placed.^ 

Again,  the  corn-spirit  in  the  form  of  a  bull  or  ox  is 
killed  on  the  harvest-field  at  the  close  of  the  reaping. 
At  Pouilly  near  Dijon,  when  the  last  ears  of  corn  are 
about  to  be  cut,  an  ox  adorned  with  ribbons,  flowers, 
and  ears  of  corn  is  led  all  round  the  field,  followed  by 
the  whole  troop  of  reapers  dancing.     Then    a   man 

1  E.  Meier,  Deutsche  Sageti,  Sitten  ^  Panzer,  op.    cit.   ii.    p.    233,    No. 

und  Gehiiiuche  aus  Schwaben,   p.  440  427  ;  M.  F.  p.  59. 

sq.     Nos.     151,     152,     153;     Panzer,  "^  M.  F.  ^^.  i^c)  sq. 

Beitra^  zur  deiUschen   Mythologie,    ii.  *  M.  F.  p.  58. 

p.  234,  No.  428  ;  M.  F.  p.  59.  ^  M.  F.  p.  58  sq. 


Ill  AS  A    COW  21 

diseuised  as  the  Devil  cuts  the  last  ears  of  corn  and 
immediately  kills  the  ox.  Part  of  the  flesh  of  the  animal 
is  eaten  at  the  harvest  supper  ;  part  is  pickled  and  kept 
till  the  first  day  of  sowing  in  spring.  At  Pont  a 
Mousson  and  elsewhere  on  the  evening  of  the  last  day 
of  reaping  a  calf  adorned  with  flowers  and  ears  of  corn 
is  led  three  times  round  the  farmyard,  being  allured 
by  a  bait  or  driven  by  men  with  sticks,  or  con- 
ducted by  the  farmer's  wife  with  a  rope.  The  calf 
selected  for  this  ceremony  is  the  calf  which  was  born 
first  on  the  farm  in  the  spring  of  the  year.  It  is 
followed  by  all  the  reapers  with  their  implements. 
Then  it  is  allowed  to  run  free  ;  the  reapers  chase  it, 
and  whoever  catches  it  is  called  King  of  the  Calf. 
Lastly,  it  is  solemnly  killed ;  at  Luneville  the  man 
who  acts  as  butcher  is  the  Jewish  merchant  of  the 
village.^ 

Sometimes  again  the  corn -spirit  hides  himself 
amongst  the  cut  corn  in  the  barn  to  reappear  in  bull 
or  cow  form  at  threshing.  Thus  at  Wurmlingen  in 
Thliringen  the  man  who  gives  the  last  stroke  at 
threshing  is  called  the  Cow,  or  rather  the  Barley-cow, 
Oats-cow,  Peas-cow,  etc.,  according  to  the  crop.  He 
is  entirely  enveloped  in  straw  ;  his  head  is  surmounted 
by  sticks  in  imitation  of  horns,  and  two  lads  lead  him 
by  ropes  to  the  well  to  drink.  On  the  way  thither  he 
must  low  like  a  cow,  and  for  a  long  time  afterwards  he 
goes  by  the  name  of  the  Cow.^  At  Obermedlingen  in 
Swabia,  when  the  threshing  draws  near  an  end,  each 
man  is  careful  to  avoid  giving  the  last  stroke.  He 
who  does  give  it  "gets  the  Cow,"  which  is  a  straw 
figure  dressed  in  an  old  ragged  petticoat,  hood,  and 

1  M.  F.  p.  60.  tmd  Gebrduche  aus  Schwaben,  p.    444 

2  E.   Meier,  Deutsche  Sagen,  Sittejt      sq.  No.  162  ;  M.  F.  p.  61. 


22  THE   CORN-SPIRIT  chap. 

Stockings.  It  is  tied  on  his  back  with  a  straw-rope  ; 
his  face  is  blackened,  he  is  tied  with  straw-ropes  to  a 
wheelbarrow,  and  wheeled  round  the  village.^  Here, 
again,  we  are  met  with  that  confusion  between  the 
anthropomorphic  and  theriomorphic  conception  of  the 
corn-spirit,  which  has  been  already  signalised.  In 
Canton  Schaffhausen  the  man  who  threshes  the  last 
corn  is  called  the  Cow ;  in  Canton  Thurgau,  the  Corn- 
bull  ;  in  Canton  Zurich,  the  Thresher-cow.  In  the 
last-mentioned  district  he  is  wrapt  in  straw  and  bound 
to  one  of  the  trees  in  the  orchard.^  At  Arad  in 
Hungary  the  man  who  gives  the  last  stroke  at  thresh- 
ing is  enveloped  in  straw  and  a  cow's  hide  with  the 
horns  attached  to  it.^  At  Pessnitz,  in  the  district  of 
Dresden,  the  man  who  gives  the  last  stroke  with  the 
flail  is  called  Bull.  He  must  make  a  straw-man  and 
set  it  up  before  a  neighbour's  window.^  Here,  appar- 
ently, as  in  so  many  cases,  the  corn-spirit  is  passed  on 
to  a  neighbour  who  has  not  finished  threshing.  So  at 
Herbrechtingen  in  Thliringen  the  effigy  of  a  ragged 
old  woman  is  flung  into  the  barn  of  the  farmer  who  is 
last  with  his  threshing.  The  man  who  throws  it  in 
cries,  "There  is  the  Cow  for  you."  If  the  threshers 
catch  him  they  detain  him  over  night  and  punish  him 
by  keeping  him  from  the  harvest  supper.^  In  these 
latter  customs  the  confusion  between  the  anthropo- 
morphic and  theriomorphic  conception  of  the  corn- 
spirit  meets  us  again.  Further,  the  corn-spirit  in  bull 
form  is  sometimes  believed  to  be  killed  at  threshino-. 
At  Auxerre  in  threshing  the  last  bundle  of  corn  they 
call  out  twelve  times,  "We  are  killing  the  Bull."     In 


1  Panzer,     Beitrag    zur     detitschen  3  j/,  /r  p_  52.  *  RI.  F.  p.  62. 

Mythologie,  ii.  p.  233,  No.  427.  ^  £_   Meier,  op,   cit.  p.  445  sq.  Ko. 

-   M.   /^.  p.  61  sq.  163. 


Ill  AS  AN  OX  23 

the  neighbourhood  of  Bordeaux,  where  a  butcher  kills 
an  ox  on  the  field  immediately  after  the  close  of  the 
reaping,  it  is  said  of  the  man  who  gives  the  last  stroke 
at  threshing  that  "  he  has  killed  the  Bull."^  At  Cham- 
bery  the  last  sheaf  is  called  the  sheaf  of  the  Young  Ox 
and  a  race  takes  place  to  it,  in  which  all  the  reapers 
join.  When  the  last  stroke  is  given  at  threshing  they 
say  that  "the  Ox  Is  killed;"  and  immediately  there- 
upon a  real  ox  is  slaughtered  by  the  reaper  who  cut 
the  last  corn.  The  flesh  of  the  ox  is  eaten  by  the 
threshers  at  supper.^ 

We  have  seen  that  sometimes  the  young  corn- 
spirit,  whose  task  it  is  to  quicken  the  corn  of  the 
coming  year,  is  believed  to  be  born  as  a  Corn-baby  on 
the  harvest-field.^'  Similarly  in  Berry  the  young  corn- 
spirit  is  sometimes  believed  to  be  born  on  the  field  in 
calf  form.  For  when  a  binder  has  not  rope  enough  to 
bind  all  the  corn  in  sheaves,  he  puts  aside  the  wheat 
that  remains  over  and  imitates  the  lowing  of  a  cow. 
The  meaning  is  that  "the  sheaf  has  given  birth  to  a 
calf."*  In  Puy-de-D6me  when  a  binder  cannot  keep 
up  with  the  reaper  whom  he  or  she  follows,  they 
say  "He  or  she  is  giving  birth  to  the  Calf."  ^  In 
some  parts  of  Prussia,  in  similar  circumstances, 
they  call  out  to  the  woman,  "The  Bull  is  coming," 
and  imitate  the  bellowing  of  a  bull.'^  In  these 
cases  the  woman  is  conceived  as  the  Corn-cow  or 
old  corn-spirit,  while  the  supposed  calf  is  the  Corn- 
calf  or  young  corn-spirit.  In  some  parts  of  Austria  a 
mythical  calf  {Muhkdlbchen)  is  believed  to  be  seen 
amongst  the  sprouting  corn  in  spring  and  to  push  the 

1  M.  F.  p.  60.  2  M.  F.  p.  62.      Legendes  du    Centre  de  la  France,   ii. 

3  Above,  vol.  i.  p.  343  sq.  135.       ^  M.  F.  p.  62,  ''II fait  le  veau." 

*  Laisnel  de  la  Salle,   Croyattces   et  ^  M.  F.  p.  62. 


24  THE   CORN-SPIRIT  chap. 

children  ;  when  the  corn  waves  in  the  wind  they  say, 
"The  Calf  is  going  about."  Clearly,  as  Mannhardt 
observes,  this  calf  of  the  spring-time  is  the  same  animal 
which  is  afterwards  believed  to  be  killed  at  reaping.^ 

Sometimes  the  corn-spirit  appears  in  the  shape  of 
a  horse  or  mare.  Between  Kalw  and  Stuttgart,  when 
the  corn  bends  before  the  wind,  they  say,  "  There  runs 
the  Horse.""^  In  Hertfordshire,  at  the  end  of  the 
reaping,  there  is  or  was  a  ceremony  called  "  crying 
the  Mare."  The  last  blades  of  corn  left  standing  on 
the  field  are  tied  together  and  called  the  Mare.  The 
reapers  stand  at  a  distance  and  throw  their  sickles  at 
it ;  he  who  cuts  it  through  "  has  the  prize,  with 
acclamations  and  good  cheer."  After  it  is  cut  the 
reapers  cry  thrice  with  a  loud  voice,  "  I  have  her!" 
Others  answer  thrice,  "  What  have  you  }  " — "  A  Mare  ! 
a  Mare  !  a  Mare  !  " — "  Whose  is  she  ? "  is  next  asked 
thrice.  "  A.  B.'s,"  naming  the  owner  thrice.  "Whither 
will  you  send  her  ?  " — "  To  C.  D.,"  naming  some  neigh- 
bour who  has  not  all  his  corn  reaped.^  In  this  custom 
the  corn-spirit  in  the  form  of  a  mare  is  passed  on  from 
a  farm  where  the  corn  is  all  cut  to  another  farm  where 
it  is  still  standing,  and  where  therefore  the  corn-spirit 
may  be  supposed  naturally  to  take  refuge.  In  Shrop- 
shire the  custom  is  similar.  "  Crying,  calling,  or 
shouting  the  mare  is  a  ceremony  performed  by  the 
men  of  that  farm  which  is  the  first  in  any  parish  or 
district  to  finish  the  harvest.  The  object  of  it  is  to 
make  known  their  own  prowess,  and  to  taunt  the 
laggards  by  a  pretended  offer  of  the  '  owd  mar' '  [old 
mare]  to  help  out  their  '  chem  '  [team].  All  the  men 
assemble  (the  wooden   harvest-bottle  being  of  course 

^  M.  F.  p.  63.  ^  Brand,  Popular  Antiquities,  ii.  24, 

2  M.  F.  p.  167.  Bohn's  ed. 


AS  A   MARE 


one  of  the  company)  in  the  stackyard,  or,  better,  on 
the  highest  ground  on  the  farm,  and  there  shout  the 
following  dialogue,  preceding  it  by  a  grand  '  Hip,  hip, 
hip,  hurrah  ! ' 

1   ave  er,  1   ave  er,  1   ave  er ! 

"  '  Whad  'ast  thee,  whad  'ast  thee,  whad  'ast  thee  ? ' 

"  '  A  mar' !  a  mar' !  a  mar' ! ' 

"  '  Whose  is  'er,  whose  is  'er,  whose  is  'er  ?' 

"'Maister  A.'s,  Maister  A.'s,  Maister  A.'s ! ' 
(naming  the  farmer  whose  harvest  is  finished). 

"  '  W'eer  sha't  the'  send  'er  ?  w'eer  sha't  the'  send 
'er  ?  w'eer  sha't  the'  send  'er  ? ' 

"  '  To  Maister  B.'s,  to  Maister  B.'s,  to  Maister 
B.'s  '  (naming  one  whose  harvest  is  not  finished)." 

The  farmer  who  finishes  his  harvest  last,  and  who 
therefore  cannot  send  the  Mare  to  any  one  else,  is 
said  "  to  keep  her  all  winter."  The  mocking  offer 
of  the  Mare  was  sometimes  responded  to  by  a 
mocking  acceptance  of  her  help.  Thus  an  old  man 
told  an  inquirer,  "While  we  wun  at  supper,  a  mon 
cumm'd  wi'  a  autar  [halter]  to  fatch  her  away." 
But  at  one  place  (Longnor,  near  Leebotwood),  down 
to  about  1850,  the  Mare  used  really  to  be  sent. 
"  The  head  man  of  the  farmer  who  had  finished 
harvest  first  was  mounted  on  the  best  horse  of  the 
team — the  leader — both  horse  and  man  being  adorned 
with  ribbons,  streamers,  etc.  Thus  arrayed,  a  boy 
on  foot  led  the  pair  in  triumph  to  the  neighbouring 
farmhouses.  Sometimes  the  man  who  took  the 
'  mare '  received,  as  well  as  plenty  of  harvest  -  ale, 
some  rather  rough,  though  good-humoured,  treatment, 
coming  back  minus  his  decorations,  and  soon."^  In 
the  neighbourhood  of  Lille  the  idea  of  the  corn-spirit 

^  Burne  and  Jackson,  Shropshire  Folk-lore,  p.  373  sq. 


26  THE   CORN-SPIRIT  chap. 

in  horse  form  Is  clearly  preserved.  When  a  harvester 
grows  weary  at  his  work,  it  is  said,  "He  has  the 
fatigue  of  the  Horse."  The  first  sheaf,  called  the 
"  Cross  of  the  Horse,"  is  placed  on  a  cross  of  box- 
wood in  the  barn,  and  the  youngest  horse  on  the 
farm  must  tread  on  it.  The  reapers  dance  round 
the  last  blades  of  corn,  crying,  "  See  the  remains 
of  the  Horse."  The  sheaf  made  out  of  these  last 
blades  is  given  to  the  youngest  horse  of  the  parish 
(commune)  to  eat.  This  youngest  horse  of  the  parish 
clearly  represents,  as  Mannhardt  says,  the  corn -spirit 
of  the  following  year,  the  Corn -foal,  which  absorbs  the 
spirit  of  the  old  Corn -horse  by  eating  the  last  corn 
cut  ;  for,  as  usual,  the  old  corn -spirit  takes  his  final 
refuge  in  the  last  sheaf.  The  thresher  of  the  last 
sheaf  is  said  to  "  beat  the  Horse."  ^  Again,  a  trace 
of  the  horse-shaped  corn-spirit  is  reported  from  Berry. 
The  harvesters  there  are  accustomed  to  take  a  noon- 
day sleep  in  the  field.  This  is  called  "seeing  the 
Horse."  The  leader  or  "  King  "  of  the  harvesters 
gives  the  signal  for  going  to  sleep.  If  he  delays 
giving  the  signal,  one  of  the  harvesters  will  begin 
to  neigh  like  a  horse,  the  rest  imitate  him,  and  then 
they  all  go  "to  see  the  Horse."  ^ 

The  last  animal  embodiment  of  the  corn  -  spirit 
which  we  shall  notice  is  the  pig  (boar  or  sow).  In 
Thiiringen,  when  the  wind  sets  the  young  corn  in 
motion,  they  sometimes  say,  "  The  Boar  is  rushing 
through  the  corn."^  Amongst  the  Esthonians  of  the 
island  of  Oesel  the  last  sheaf  is  called  the  Rye-boar, 
and   the   man   who  gets   it   is  saluted  with  a  cry  of, 

1  M.  F.  p.  167.  3  Witzschel,     Sagen,     Sitten      imd 

2  Laisnel  de  la  Salle,   Croyances  et      Gclrimche  aus  Thiiringen,  p.  213,  No. 
Legendcs  du  Centre  de  la  France^  ii.  1 33  ;      4. 

M.  F.  p.   167  sq. 


Ill  AS  A   PIG  27 

"  You  have  the  Rye-boar  on  your  back!"  In  reply 
he  strikes  up  a  song,  in  which  he  prays  for  plenty.^ 
At  Kohlerwinkel,  near  Augsburg,  at  the  close  of  the 
harvest,  the  last  bunch  of  standing  corn  is  cut  down, 
stalk  by  stalk,  by  all  the  reapers  in  turn.  He  who 
cuts  the  last  stalk  "gets  the  Sow,"  and  is  laughed  at.- 
In  other  Swabian  villages  also  the  man  who  cuts  the 
last  corn  "  has  the  Sow,"  or  "has  the  Rye-sow."  ^  In 
the  Traunstein  district,  Upper  Bavaria,  the  man  who 
cuts  the  last  handful  of  rye  or  wheat  "has  the  Sow," 
and  is  called  Sow-driver.^  At  Friedingen,  in  Swabia, 
the  thresher  who  gives  the  last  stroke  is  called  Sow — 
Barley- sow.  Corn -sow,  etc.,  according  to  the  crop. 
At  Onstmettingen  the  man  who  gives  the  last  stroke 
at  threshing  "  has  the  Sow  ;  "  he  is  often  bound  up 
in  a  sheaf  and  dragged  by  a  rope  along  the  ground.^ 
And,  generally,  in  Swabia  the  man  who  gives  the  last 
stroke  with  the  flail  is  called  Sow.  He  may,  however, 
rid  himself  of  this  invidious  distinction  by  passing  on 
to  a  neighbour  the  straw- rope,  which  is  the  badge  of 
his  position  as  Sow.  So  he  goes  to  a  house  and 
throws  the  straw -rope  into  it,  crying,  "There,  I 
bring  you  the  Sow."  All  the  inmates  give  chase  ; 
and  if  they  catch  him  they  beat  him,  shut  him  up  for 
several  hours  in  the  pig -sty,  and  oblige  him  to  take 
the  "Sow"  away  again.*'  In  various  parts  of  Upper 
Bavaria  the  man  who  gives  the  last  stroke  at  threshing 
must  "carry  the  Pig" — that  is,  either  a  straw  effigy  of 
a  pig  or  merely  a  bundle   of  straw-ropes.     This  he 


^  Holzmayer,  Osiliana,  p.  107;  M.  *  I\L  F.  p.  112. 

F.  p.  187.  s  E.  Meier,  Deutsche  Sagen,  Sitten 

2  Birlinger,  A  us  Schwaben,  ii.  328.  iind  Gebrciuche  aus  Schwaben,  p.   445, 

^  Panzer,      Beitrag     ziir     detitschen  No.  162. 
Mythologie,  ii.  pp.  223,  224,  Nos.  417,  ^  Birlinger,       Volksthiimliches      aus 

419.  Schwaben,  ii.  425,  No.  379. 


28  THE   CORN-SPIRIT 


carries  to  a  neighbouring  farm  where  the  threshing 
is  not  finished,  and  throws  it  into  the  barn.  If  the 
threshers  catch  him  they  handle  him  roughly,  beating 
him,  blackening  or  dirtying  his  face,  throwing  him  into 
filth,  binding  the  Sow  on  his  back,  etc.  ;  if  the  bearer 
of  the  Sow  is  a  woman  they  cut  off  her  hair.  At  the 
harvest  supper  or  dinner  the  man  who  "  carried  the 
Pig  "  gets  one  or  more  dumplings  made  in  the  form  of 
pigs ;  sometimes  he  gets  a  large  dumpling  and  a  number 
of  small  ones,  all  in  pig  form,  the  large  one  being 
called  the  sow  and  the  small  ones  the  sucking-pigs. 
Sometimes  he  has  the  right  to  be  the  first  to  put 
his  hand  into  the  dish  and  take  out  as  many  small 
dumplings  ("sucking-pigs  ")  as  he  can,  while  the  other 
threshers  strike  at  his  hand,  with  spoons  or  sticks. 
When  the  dumplings  are  served  up  by  the  maid- 
servant, all  the  people  at  table  cry,  "  Sliz,  siiz,  sliz  !  " 
being  the  cry  used  in  calling  pigs.  Sometimes  after 
dinner  the  man  who  "  carried  the  Pig  "  has  his  face 
blackened,  and  is  set  on  a  cart  and  drawn  round  the 
village  by  his  fellows,  followed  by  a  crowd  crying, 
"  Siiz,  siiz,  sliz !  "  as  if  they  were  calling  swine. 
Sometimes,  after  being  wheeled  round  the  village, 
he  is  flung  on  the  dunghill.^ 

Again,  the  corn-spirit  in  the  form  of  a  pig  plays  his 
part  at  sowing-time  as  well  as  at  harvest.  At  Neuautz, 
in  Courland,  when  barley  is  sown  for  the  first  time  in 
the  year,  the  farmer's  wife  boils  the  chine  of  a  pig  along 
with  the  tail,  and  brings  it  to  the  sower  on  the  field. 
He  eats  of  it,  but  cuts  off  the  tail  and  sticks  it  in  the 
field  ;  it  is  believed  that  the  ears  of  corn  will  then  grow 
as  long  as  the  tail.^     Here  the  pig  is  the  corn -spirit, 

1  Panzer,  Beitrag  ztu- deiitschen  Mythologie,  ii.  pp.  221-224,  Nos.  409,  410, 
411,  412,  413,  414,  415,  418.  2  yj/_  /r  p.   186  i-r/. 


Ill  AS  A  PIG  29 

whose  fertilising  power  is  sometimes  supposed  to 
lie  especially  in  his  tail,^  As  a  pig  he  is  put  in  the 
ground  at  sowing  -  time,  and  as  a  pig  he  reappears 
amongst  the  ripe  corn  at  harvest.  For  amongst 
the  neighbouring  Esthonians,  as  we  have  seen,"  the 
last  sheaf  is  called  the  Rye-boar.  Somewhat  similar 
customs  are  observed  in  Germany.  In  the  Salza 
district,  near  Meiningen,  a  certain  bone  in  the  pig 
is  called  "the  Jew  on  the  winnowing- fan"  [der  Jitd' 
auf  der  Wanne).  The  flesh  of  this  bone  is  boiled 
on  Shrove  Tuesday,  but  the  bone  is  put  amongst 
the  ashes,  which  the  neighbours  exchange  as  presents 
on  St.  Peter's  Day  (2 2d  February),  and  then  mix 
with  the  seed-corn.^  In  the  whole  of  Hessen, 
Meiningen,  etc.,  people  eat  pea -soup  with  dried 
pig  -  ribs  on  Ash  Wednesday  or  Candlemas.  The 
ribs  are  then  collected  and  hung  in  the  room  till 
sowing -time,  when  they  are  inserted  in  the  sown 
field  or  in  the  seed -bag  amongst  the  flax  seed.  This 
is  thought  to  be  an  infallible  specific  against  earth- 
fleas  and  moles,  and  to  cause  the  flax  to  grow  well 
and  tall.^  In  many  parts  of  White  Russia  people 
eat  a  roast  lamb  or  sucking-pig  at  Easter,  and  then 
throw  the  bones  backwards  upon  the  fields,  to  pre- 
serve the  corn  from  hail.^ 

But  the  conception  of  the  corn-spirit  as  embodied 
in  pig  form  is  nowhere  more  clearly  expressed  than  in 
the  Scandinavian  custom  of  the  Yule  Boar.  In  Sweden 
and  Denmark  at  Yule  (Christmas)  it  is  the  custom  to 
bake  a  loaf  in  the  form  of  a  boar-pig.     This  is  called 

1  Above,  p.  3.  pp.    189,    218;    W.    Kolbe,   Hessische 

2  Above,  p.  26  sq.  Volks-Sitten  und  Gebrdiiche  (Marburg, 

3  M.  F.  p.  187.  1888),  p.  35. 

*  M.F.-p.  iSy  sq.;  Witzschel,  Sag-en,  5  ^/_  /r.  p.    igg  ;  Ralston,  Songs  of 

Sitten  tmd  Gebrdnche  aus   Thiiringen,      the  Riissiati  People,  p.  220. 


30  THE   YULE  BOAR 


the  Yule  Boar.  The  corn  of  the  last  sheaf  is  often  used 
to  make  it.  All  through  Yule  the  Yule  Boar  stands  on 
the  table.  Often  it  is  kept  till  the  sowing-time  in  spring, 
when  part  of  it  is  mixed  with  the  seed-corn  and  part 
given  to  the  ploughmen  and  plough-horses  or  plough- 
oxen  to  eat,  in  the  expectation  of  a  good  harvest.^  In 
this  custom  the  corn-spirit,  immanent  in  the  last  sheaf, 
appears  at  midwinter  in  the  form  of  a  boar  made  from 
the  corn  of  the  last  sheaf;  and  his  quickening  influence 
on  the  corn  is  shown  by  mixing  part  of  the  Yule  Boar 
wath  the  seed-corn,  and  giving  part  of  it  to  the  plough- 
man and  his  cattle  to  eat.  Similarly  we  saw  that  the 
Corn -wolf  makes  his  appearance  at  midwinter,  the 
time  when  the  year  begins  to  verge  towards  spring.- 
We  may  conjecture  that  the  Yule  straw,  of  which 
Swedish  peasants  make  various  superstitious  uses, 
comes,  in  part  at  least,  from  the  sheaf  out  of  which 
the  Yule  Boar  is  made.  The  Yule  straw  is  long 
rye -straw,  a  portion  of  which  is  always  set  apart 
for  this  season.  It  is  strewn  over  the  floor  at 
Christmas,  and  the  peasants  attribute  many  virtues 
to  it.  For  example,  they  think  that  some  of  it 
scattered  on  the  ground  will  make  a  barren  field 
productive.  Again,  the  peasant  at  Christmas  seats 
himself  on  a  log  ;  his  eldest  son  or  daughter,  or  the 
mother  herself,  if  the  children  are  not  old  enough, 
places  a  wisp  of  the  Yule  straw  on  his  knee.  From 
this  he  draws  out  single  straws,  and  throws  them, 
one  by  one,  up  to  the  ceiling  ;  and  as  many  as  lodge 
in  the  rafters,  so  many  will  be  the  sheaves  of  rye  he 


1  A.  IV.  F.  p.  ig'js(/.;  Vanzer,  Bet'/ra^-  Volkssage7i  zind  Volkslieder  atis  Schwe- 

zur  deiitschen  Mythologie,   ii.   p.  491  ;  dens  dlterer  und  netierer  Zeit,  ubersetzt 

Jamieson,    Dictionary   of  the   Scottish  von  Ungewitter,  i.  9. 

Language,   s.v.    "Maiden";    Afzelius,  ^  Above,  p.  b  sq. 


THE   YULE  BOAR  31 


will  have  to  thresh  at  harvest.^  Again,  it  is  only 
the  Yule  straw  which  may  be  used  in  binding  the 
fruit-trees  as  a  charm  to  fertilise  them.-  These  uses 
of  the  Yule  straw  show  that  it  is  believed  to  possess 
fertilising  virtues  analogous  to  those  ascribed  to  the 
Yule  Boar ;  the  conjecture  is  therefore  legitimate  that 
the  Yule  straw  is  made  from  the  same  sheaf  as  the 
Yule  Boar.  Formerly  a  real  boar  was  sacrificed  at 
Christmas/  and  apparently  also  a  man  in  the  character 
of  the  Yule  Boar.  This,  at  least,  may  perhaps  be  in- 
ferred from  a  Christmas  custom  still  observed  in 
Sweden.  A  man  is  wrapt  up  in  a  skin,  and  carries  a 
wisp  of  straw  in  his  mouth,  so  that  the  projecting 
straws  look  like  the  bristles  of  a  boar.  A  knife  is 
brought,  and  an  old  woman,  with  her  face  blackened, 
pretends  to  sacrifice  the  man.* 

So  much  for  the  animal  embodiments  of  the  corn- 
spirit  as  they  are  presented  to  us  in  the  folk-customs  of 
Northern  Europe.  These  customs  bring  out  clearly 
the  sacramental  character  of  the  harvest  supper.  The 
corn-spirit  is  conceived  as  embodied  in  an  animal ;  this 
divine  animal  is  slain,  and  its  flesh  and  blood  are 
partaken  of  by  the  harvesters.  Thus,  the  cock,  the 
goose,  the  hare,  the  cat,  the  goat,  and  the  ox  are  eaten 
sacramentally  by  the  harvesters,  and  the  pig  is  eaten 
sacramentally  by  ploughmen  in  spring.^  Again,  as 
a  substitute  for  the  real  flesh  of  the  divine  being,  bread 
or  dumplings  are  made  in  his  image  and  eaten  sacra- 
mentally; thus,  pig-shaped  dumplings  are  eaten  by  the 

1  L.  Lloyd,  Peasant  Life  in  Sweden,  *  Afzelius,  op.  cit.  i.  9  ;  Lloyd,  Peasant 
pp.  169  j^.,  1S2.      On  Christmas  night      Life  in  Sweden,  pp.  181,  185. 
children  sleep   on   a  bed   of  the  Yule 

straw  [ib.  p.  177).  5  Above,  pp.  8  j^.,  11,  12,  155^.,  21, 

2  Jahn,  Deutsche   Opfergebrduche,  p.  23,  28.    In  regard  to  the  hare,  the  sub- 
215.     Cp.  above,  vol.  i.  p.  60.  stitution    of  brandy   for    hare's    blood 

3  Afzelius,  op.  cit.  i.  31.  is  doubtless  comparatively  modem. 


THE   CORN-SPIRIT 


harvesters,  and  loaves  made  in  boar-shape  (the  Yule 
Boar)  are  eaten  in  spring  by  the  ploughman  and  his 
cattle. 

The  reader  has  probably  remarked  the  complete 
parallelism  between  the  anthropomorphic  and  the 
theriomorphic  conceptions  of  the  corn -spirit.  The 
parallel  may  be  here  briefly  resumed.  When  the 
corn  waves  in  the  wind  it  is  said  either  that  the 
Corn -mother  or  that  the  Corn -wolf,  etc.  is  passing 
throuQ:h  the  corn.  Children  are  warned  acjainst 
straying  in  corn-fields  either  because  the  Corn-mother 
or  because  the  Corn-wolf,  etc.  is  there.  In  the  last  corn 
cut  or  the  last  sheaf  threshed  either  the  Corn-mother 
or  the  Corn-wolf,  etc.  is  supposed  to  be  present.  The 
last  sheaf  is  itself  called  either  the  Corn-mother  or  the 
Corn- wolf,  etc.,  and  is  made  up  in  the  shape  either  of  a 
woman  or  of  a  wolf,  etc.  The  person  who  cuts,  binds, 
or  threshes  the  last  sheaf  is  called  either  the  Old 
Woman  or  the  Wolf,  etc.,  according  to  the  name 
bestowed  on  the  sheaf  itself.  As  in  some  places  a 
sheaf  made  in  human  form  and  called  the  Maiden, 
the  Mother  of  the  Maize,  etc.  is  kept  from  one 
harvest  to  the  next  in  order  to  secure  a  continuance 
of  the  corn -spirit's  blessing;  so  in  some  places  the 
Harvest- cock  and  in  others  the  flesh  of  the  goat  is 
kept  for  a  similar  purpose  from  one  harvest  to  the 
next.  As  in  some  places  the  grain  taken  from  the 
Corn-mother  is  mixed  with  the  seed-corn  in  spring  to 
make  the  crop  abundant ;  so  in  some  .places  the 
feathers  of  the  cock,  and  in  Sweden  the  Yule  Boar 
is  kept  till  spring  and  mixed  with  the  seed-corn  for 
a  like  purpose.  As  part  of  the  Corn -mother  or 
Maiden  is  given  to  the  cattle  to  eat  in  order  that  they 
may  thrive,  so  part  of  the  Yule  Boar  is  given  to  the 


Ill  IN  ANIMAL  FORM  33 

ploughing  horses  or  oxen  in  spring.  Lastly,  the  death 
of  the  corn-spirit  is  represented  by  killing  (in  reality  or 
pretence)  either  his  human  or  his  animal  representative; 
and  the  worshippers  partake  sacramentally  either  of 
the  actual  body  and  blood  of  the  representative  (human 
or  animal)  of  the  divinity,  or  of  bread  made  in  his 
likeness. 

Other  animal  forms  assumed  by  the  corn-spirit  are 
the  stag,  roe,  sheep,  bear,  ass,  fox,  mouse,  stork,  swan, 
and  kite.^  If  it  is  asked  why  the  corn-spirit  should  be 
thought  to  appear  in  the  form  of  an  animal  and  of 
so  many  different  animals,  we  may  reply  that  to 
primitive  man  the  simple  appearance  of  an  animal 
or  bird  among  the  corn  is  probably  sufficient  of  itself 
to  suggest  a  mysterious  connection  between  the  animal 
or  bird  and  the  corn  ;  and  when  we  remember  that  in 
the  old  days,  before  fields  were  fenced  in,  all  kinds 
of  animals  must  have  been  free  to  roam  over  them,  we 
need  not  wonder  that  the  corn-spirit  should  have  been 
identified  even  with  laro-e  animals  like  the  horse  and 
cow,  which  nowadays  could  not,  except  by  a  rare 
accident,  be  found  straying  among  the  corn.  This 
explanation  applies  with  peculiar  force  to  the  very 
common  case  in  which  the  animal  embodiment  of  the 
corn-spirit  is  believed  to  lurk  in  the  last  standing  corn. 
For  at  harvest  a  number  of  wild  animals — hares, 
rabbits,  partridges,  etc. — are  commonly  driven  by  the 
progress  of  the  reaping  into  the  last  patch  of  standing 
corn,  and  make  their  escape  from  it  as  it  is  being  cut 
down.  So  regularly  does  this  happen  that  reapers 
and  others  often  stand  round  the  last  patch  of  corn 
armed  with  sticks  or  guns,  with  which  they  kill  the 
animals  as  they  dart  out  of  their  last  refuge  among  the 

^  Die  Kornddino}ten,  p.   I. 
VOL.   II  D 


34  DIONYSUS 


corn.  Now,  primitive  man,  to  whom  magical  changes 
of  shape  seem  perfectly  credible,  finds  it  most  natural 
that  the  spirit  of  the  corn,  driven  from  his  home 
amongst  the  corn,  should  make  his  escape  in  the  form 
of  the  animal  which  is  seen  to  rush  out  of  the  last 
patch  of  corn  as  it  falls  under  the  scythe  of  the  reaper. 
Thus  the  identification  of  the  corn -spirit  with  an 
animal  is  analogous  to  the  identification  of  him  with 
a  passing  stranger.  As  the  sudden  appearance  of  a 
stranger  near  the  harvest-field  or  threshing-floor  is,  to 
the  primitive  mind,  sufficient  to  identify  him  as  the 
spirit  of  the  corn  escaping  from  the  cut  or  threshed 
corn,  so  the  sudden  appearance  of  an  animal  issuing 
from  the  cut  corn  is  enough  to  identify  it  with  the 
corn-spirit  escaping  from  his  ruined  home.  The  two 
identifications  are  so  analogous  that  they  can  hardly  be 
dissociated  in  any  attempt  to  explain  them.  Those 
who  look  to  some  other  principle  than  the  one  here 
suggested  for  the  explanation  of  the  latter  identifi- 
cation are  bound  to  show  that  their  explanation  covers 
the  former  identification  also. 

But  however  we  may  explain  it,  the  fact  remains 
that  in  peasant  folk-lore  the  corn -spirit  is  very  com- 
monly conceived  and  represented  in  animal  form. 
May  not  this  fact  explain  the  relation  in  which  certain 
animals  stood  to  the  ancient  deities  of  vegetation, 
Dionysus,  Demeter,  Adonis,  Attis,  and  Osiris  ? 

To  begin  with  Dionysus.  We  have  seen  that  he 
was  represented  sometimes  as  a  goat  and  sometimes 
as  a  bull.  As  a  goat  he  can  hardly  be  separated  from 
the  minor  divinities,  the  Pans,  Satyrs,  and  Silenuses, 
all  of  whom  are  closely  associated  with  him  and  are 
represented  more  or  less  completely  in  the  form  of 
goats.       Thus,     Pan    was    regularly    represented    in 


AS  A    GOAT 


35 


sculpture  and  painting  with  the  face  and  legs  of  a 
goat/  The  Satyrs  were  depicted  with  pointed  goat- 
ears,  and  sometimes  with  sprouting  horns  and  short 
tails.-  They  were  sometimes  spoken  of  simply  as 
goats  ;  3  and  in  the  drama  their  parts  were  played  by 
men  dressed  in  goat-skins.^  Silenus  is  represented  in 
art  clad  in  a  goat-skin.'^  Further,  the  Fauns,  the 
Italian  counterpart  of  the  Greek  Pans  and  Satyrs, 
are  described  as  being  half  goats,  with  goat-feet  and 
goat-horns.*^  Again,  all  these  minor  goat-formed 
divinities  partake  more  or  less  clearly  of  the  character 
of  woodland  deities.  Thus,  Pan  was  called  by  the 
Arcadians  the  Lord  of  the  Wood.^  The  Silenuses 
associated  with  the  tree -nymphs.^  The  Fauns  are 
expressly  designated  as  woodland  deities  ;  ^  and  their 
character  as  such  is  still  further  brought  out  by  their 
association,  or  even  identification,  with  Silvanus  and 
the  Silvanuses,  who,  as  their  name  of  itself  indicates, 
are  spirits  of  the  woods.^*'  Lastly,  the  association  of 
the  Satyrs  with  the  Silenuses,  Fauns,  and  Silvanuses,^^ 
proves  that  the  Satyrs  also  were  woodland  deities. 
These  goat-formed  spirits  of  the  woods  have  their 
counterparts  in  the  folk-lore  of  Northern  Europe. 
Thus,  the  Russian  wood-spirits,  called  Ljeschie  (from 
Ijes,  "  wood,")  are  believed  to  appear  partly  in  human 
shape,  but  with  the  horns,  ears,  and  legs  of  goats. 
The  Ljeschi  can  alter  his  stature  at  pleasure  ;  when  he 

1  Herodotus,  ii.  46.  ^  Pliny,  N.  H.  xii.  3  ;  Ovid,  Metam. 
-  Preller,  Gricchische  Mythologie,^  i.       vi.    392;    id.,    Fasti,    iii.    303,    309; 

600;  A.  W.  F.  p.  138.  Gloss.    Isid.  Mart.  Cap.   ii.    167,  cited 

3  A.   IV.  F.  p.  139.  by  Mannhardt,  A.   W.  F.  p.  113. 

*  Pollux,  iv.  118.  10  Pliny,  N.  H.  xii.  3  ;  Martianus 
^  A.  W.  F.  p.  142  sq.  Capella,  ii.  167;  Augustine,  Civ.  Dei, 
"  Ovid,  Fasti,  ii.   361  ;  iii.  312  ;  v.      xv.    23;  Aurelius  Victor,  Oi-igo  gentis 

loi  ;  id.,  Heroides,  iv.  49.  Roinanae,  iv.  6. 

''  Macrobius,  Sat.  i.  22,  3.  "  Servius   on  Virgil,   Ed.    vi.    14  ; 

*  Homer,  Hyimi  to  Aphrodite,  262      Ovid,  Metam.  vi.   392  sq.  ;  Martianus 
sqq.  Capella,  ii.   167. 


36  THE   GOAT-DIONYSUS  chap. 

walks  in  the  wood  he  is  as  tall  as  the  trees ;  when  he 
walks  in  the  meadows  he  is  no  higher  than  the  grass. 
Some  of  the  Ljeschie  are  spirits  of  the  corn  as  well 
as  of  the  wood  ;  before  harvest  they  are  as  tall  as  the 
corn-stalks,  but  after  it  they  shrink  to  the  height  of  the 
stubble.^  This  brings  out — what  we  have  remarked 
before — the  close  connection  between  tree -spirits  and 
corn -spirits,  and  shows  how  easily  the  former  may 
melt  into  the  latter.  Similarly  the  Fauns,  though 
wood-spirits,  were  believed  to  foster  the  growth  of  the 
crops.  ^  We  have  already  seen  how  often  the  corn- 
spirit  is  represented  in  folk-custom  as  a  goat.^  On  the 
whole,  then,  as  Mannhardt  argues,^  the  Pans,  Satyrs, 
and  Fauns  appear  to  belong  to  a  widely  diffused  class 
of  wood-spirits  conceived  in  goat-form.  The  fondness 
of  goats  for  straying  in  woods  and  nibbling  the  bark  of 
trees — to  which  it  is  well  known  that  they  are  most 
destructive— is  an  obvious  and  perhaps  sufficient  reason 
why  wood-spirits  should  so  often  be  supposed  to  take 
the  form  of  goats.  The  inconsistency  of  a  god  of 
vegetation  subsisting  upon  the  vegetation  which  he 
personifies  is  not  one  to  strike  the  primitive  mind. 
Such  inconsistencies  arise  when  the  deity,  ceasing  to 
be  immanent  in  the  vegetation,  comes  to  be  regarded 
as  its  owner  or  lord ;  for  the  idea  of  owning  the 
vegetation  naturally  leads  to  that  of  subsisting  on  it. 
We  have  already  seen  that  the  corn -spirit,  originally 
conceived  as  immanent  in  the  corn,  afterwards  comes 
to  be  regarded  as  its  owner,  who  lives  on  it  and  is 
reduced  to  poverty  and  want  by  being  deprived  of  it.^ 

Thus  the  representation  of  wood -spirits  in  goat- 
form  appears  to  be  both  widespread  and,  to  the  primi- 

1  B.  K.  p.  138  sq.'.  A,  IV.  F.  p.  145.  2  Servius  on  Virgil,  Georg.  i.  10. 

2  Above,  p.  12  sqq.  ■*  A.  W,  F.  ch.  iii.  ^  Above,  vol.  i.  p.  379  sq. 


THE  BULL-DIONYSUS  37 


tive  mind,  natural.  Therefore  when  we  find,  as  we 
have  done,  that  Dionysus — a  tree-god — is  sometimes 
represented  in  goat  form,^  we  can  hardly  avoid  con- 
cluding that  this  representation  is  simply  a  part  of  his 
proper  character  as  a  tree-god  and  is  not  to  be  explained 
by  the  fusion  of  two  distinct  and  independent  cults,  in 
one  of  which  he  originally  appeared  as  a  tree-god  and 
in  the  other  as  a  goat.  If  such  a  fusion  took  place  in 
the  case  of  Dionysus,  it  must  equally  have  taken  place 
in  the  case  of  the  Pans  and  Satyrs  of  Greece,  the 
Fauns  of  Italy,  and  ih&  Ljesckie  of  Russia.  That  such 
a  fusion  of  two  wholly  disconnected  cults  should  have 
occurred  once  is  possible  ;  that  it  should  have  occurred 
twice  independently  is  improbable  ;  that  it  should  have 
occurred  thrice  independently  is  so  unlikely  as  to  be 
practically  incredible. 

Dionysus  was  also  represented,  as  we  have  seen," 
in  the  form  of  a  bull.  After  what  has  gone  before  we 
are  naturally  led  to  expect  that  his  bull  form  must  have 
been  only  another  expression  for  his  character  as  a 
deity  of  vegetation,  especially  as  the  bull  is  a  common 
embodiment  of  the  corn-spirit  in  Northern  Europe;^  and 
the  close  association  of  Dionysus  with  Demeter  and 
Proserpine  in  the  mysteries  of  Eleusis  shows  that  he 
had  at  least  strong  agricultural  affinities.  The  other 
possible  explanation  of  the  bull-shaped  Dionysus  would 
be  that  the  conception  of  him  as  a  bull  was  originally 
entirely  distinct  from  the  conception  of  him  as  a  deity 
of  vegetation,  and  that  the  fusion  of  the  two  conceptions 
was  due  to  some  such  circumstance  as  the  union  of  two 
tribes,  one  of  which  had  previously  worshipped  a  bull- 
god  and  the  other  a  tree-god.  This  appears  to  be  the 
view  taken  by  Mr.  Andrew  Lang,  who  suggests  that 

1  Above,  vol.  i.  p.  326  sq.        2  Above,  vol.  i.  p.  325  sq.       3  Above,  p.  19  sqq. 


38  OX  REPRESENTS 


the  bull-formed  Dionysus  "had  either  been  developed 
out  of,  or  had  succeeded  to  the  worship  of  a  bull-totem."^ 
Of  course  this  is  possible.  But  it  is  not  yet  certain 
that  the  Aryans  ever  had  totemism.  On  the  other 
hand,  it  is  quite  certain  that  many  Aryan  peoples  have 
conceived  deities  of  vegetation  as  embodied  in  animal 
forms.  Therefore  when  we  find  amongst  an  Aryan 
people  like  the  Greeks  a  deity  of  vegetation  represented 
as  an  animal,  the  presumption  must  be  in  favour  of 
explaining  this  by  a  principle  which  is  certainly  known 
to  have  influenced  the  Aryan  race  rather  than  by  one 
which  is  not  certainly  known  to  have  done  so.  In  the 
present  state  of  our  knowledge,  therefore,  it  is  safer  to 
regard  the  bull  form  of  Dionysus  as  being,  like  his 
goat  form,  an  expression  of  his  proper  character  as  a 
deity  of  vegetation. 

The  probability  of  this  view  will  be  somewhat 
increased  if  it  can  be  shown  that  in  other  rites  than 
those  of  Dionysus  the  ancients  slew  an  ox  as  a  repre- 
sentative of  the  spirit  of  vegetation.  This  they  appear 
to  have  done  in  the  Athenian  sacrifice  known  as  "  the 
murder  of  the  ox  "  {boitplionia).  It  took  place  about 
the  end  of  June  or  beginning  of  July,  that  is,  about  the 
time  when  the  threshing  is  nearly  over  in  Attica. 
'According  to  tradition  the  sacrifice  was  instituted  to 
procure  a  cessation  of  drought  and  barrenness  which  had 
afiflicted  the  land.  The  ritual  was  as  follows.  Barley 
mixed  with  wheat,  or  cakes  made  of  them,  were  laid 
upon  the  bronze  altar  of  Zeus  Polieus  on  the  Acropolis. 
Oxen  were  driven  round  the  altar,  and  the  ox  which 
went  up  to  the  altar  and  ate  the  offering  on  it  was  sacri- 
ficed. The  axe  and  knife  with  which  the  beast  was 
slain  had  been  previously  wetted  with  water  brought 

^  A.  Lang,  Myth,  Ritual,  and  Religion,  ii.  232. 


in  THE  SPIRIT  OF   VEGETATION  39 

by  maidens  called  "  water-carriers."  The  weapons 
were  then  sharpened  and  handed  to  the  butchers,  one 
of  whom  felled  the  ox  with  the  axe  and  another  cut 
its  throat  with  the  knife.  As  soon  as  he  had  felled  the 
ox,  the  former  threw  the  axe  from  him  and  fled  ;  and 
the  man  who  cut  the  beast's  throat  apparently  imitated 
his  example.  Meantime  the  ox  was  skinned  and  all 
present  partook  of  its  flesh.  Then  the  hide  was  stuffed 
with  straw  and  sewed  up  ;  next  the  stuffed  animal  was 
set  on  its  feet  and  yoked  to  a  plough  as  if  it  were 
ploughing.  A  trial  then  took  place  in  an  ancient  law- 
court  presided  over  by  the  King  (as  he  was  called)  to 
determine  who  had  murdered  the  ox.  The  maidens 
who  had  brought  the  water  accused  the  men  who 
had  sharpened  the  axe  and  knife ;  the  men  who  had 
sharpened  the  axe  and  knife  blamed  the  men  who 
had  handed  these  implements  to  the  butchers  ;  the 
men  who  had  handed  the  implements  to  the  butchers 
blamed  the  butchers  ;  and  the  butchers  laid  the  blame 
on  the  axe  and  knife,  which  were  accordingly  found 
guilty,  condemned,  and  cast  into  the  sea.^ 

The  name  of  this  sacrifice, — "the  imirder  of  the 
ox,"^ — the  pains  taken  by  each  person  who  had  a  hand 
in  the  slaughter  to  lay  the  blame  on  some  one  else, 

1  Pausanias,  i.  24,  4  ;  id.,  i.  28,  10  ;  of   the   knife.      But  from   Porphyry's 

Porphyry,   De   abstinentia,  ii.    29  sq.  ;  description  it  is  clear  that  the  slaughter 

Aelian,   Var.   Hist.   viii.   3  ;  Schol.  on  was    carried    out    by    two    men,    one 

Aristophanes,  Peace,   419;  Hesychius,  wielding  an  axe  and  the  other  a  knife, 

Suidas,    and    Etyniol.     Magnum,    s.v.  and  that  the  former  laid  the  blame  on 

^oiKpovia.      The    date    of   the    sacrifice  the   latter.       Perhaps   the  knife  alone 

(14th   Skirophorion)   is    given    by  the  was     condemned.       That     the     King 

Schol.  on  Aristophanes  and  the  Etym.  Archon  (on  whom  see  above,  vol.  i.  p. 

jMagn.  ;    and    this    date    corresponds,  7),  presided  at  the  trial  of  all  lifeless 

according  to  Mannhardt  {M.  F.  p.  68),  objects,  is  mentioned  by  Pollux,  viii. 

with    the    close    of    the    threshing   in  90 ;  cp.  id,  viii.  1 20. 

Attica.     No  writer  mentions  the  trial  2  The    real    import    of    the    name 

of    both     the     axe     and    the     knife.  bouphonia  was  first  perceived  by  Prof. 

Pausanias   speaks   of  the   trial    of  the  W.  Robertson  Smith.     See  his  Religion 

axe,  Porphyry  and  Aelian   of  the  trial  of  the  Semites,  i.  286  sqq. 


40  OX  REPRESENTS  chap. 

together  with  the  formal  trial  and  punishment  of  the 
axe   or   knife    or  both,  prove  that  the  ox    was    here 
regarded  not  merely  as  a  victim  offered  to  a  god,  but 
as    itself  a   sacred  creature,   the   slaughter   of  which 
was  sacrilege   or  murder.      This    is   borne   out   by   a 
statement  of  Varro  that  to  kill  an  ox  was  formerly  a 
capital  crime  in  Attica/     The  mode  of  selecting  the 
victim  suggests  that  the  ox  which  tasted  the  corn  was 
viewed  as  the  corn-deity  taking  possession  of  his  own. 
This    interpretation    is    supported    by    the    following 
custom.      In  Beauce,  in  the  district  of  Orleans,  on  the 
24th  or  25th  of  April  they  make  a  straw-man  called 
"the   great   mondai'dr      For  they  say  that    the   old 
mondard  is  now  dead  and  it  is  necessary  to  make  a  new 
one.     The  straw-man  is  carried  in  solemn  procession 
up  and  down  the  village  and  at  last  is  placed  upon  the 
oldest  apple-tree.     There  he  remains  till   the  apples 
are  gathered,  when  he  is  taken  down  and  thrown  into 
the  water,  or  he  is  burned  and  his  ashes  cast  into  water. 
But  the  person  who  plucks  the  first  fruit  from  the  tree 
succeeds  to  the  title  of  "the  great  mondard.''^.     Here 
the  straw    figure,    called    "the   great   mondm-d"    and 
placed  on  the  apple-tree  in  spring,  represents  the  spirit 
of  the   tree,   who,   dead  in  winter,   revives   when   the 
apple-blossoms  appear  in  spring.     The  fact,  therefore, 
that   the  person   who  plucks  the  first  fruit  from   the 
apple-tree  receives  the  name  of  "  the  great  mondard'' 
proves  that  he  is  regarded  as  a  representative  of  the 
tree-spirit.      Primitive  peoples  are,  as  a  rule,  reluctant 
to  taste  the  annual  first-fruits  of  any  crop,  until  some 
ceremony  has  been  performed  which  makes  it  safe  and 


^  Vano,  De  re  rustica,  ii.  5,  4.  merely  an  inference  drawn  from  the 
Cp.  Columella,  vi.  praef.  §  7.  Perhaps,  ritual  of  the  boiiphonia  and  the  legend 
however,    Varro's    statement    may    Le      told  to  explain  it.  ^  £^  j^  p_  ^Qg_ 


Ill  THE  SPIRIT  OF   VEGETATION  41 

pious  for  them  to  do  so.  The  reason  of  this  reluct- 
ance appears  to  be  that  the  first-fruits  either  are  the 
property  of,  or  actually  contain,  a  divinity.  Therefore 
when  a  man  or  animal  is  seen  boldly  to  appropriate 
the  sacred  first-fruits,  he  or  it  is  naturally  regarded  as 
the  divinity  himself  in  human  or  animal  form  taking 
possession  of  his  own.  The  time  of  the  Athenian 
sacrifice — about  the  close  of  the  threshing — suggests 
that  the  wheat  and  barley  laid  upon  the  altar  were 
a  harvest  offering  ;  and  the  sacramental  character  of 
the  subsequent  repast — all  partaking  of  the  flesh  of  the 
divine  animal — would  make  it  parallel  to  the  harvest 
suppers  of  modern  Europe,  in  which,  as  we  have  seen, 
the  flesh  of  the  animal  who  represents  the  corn-spirit  is 
eaten  by  the  harvesters.  Again,  the  tradition  that  the 
sacrifice  was  instituted  in  order  to  put  an  end  to  drought 
and  famine  is  in  favour  of  taking  it  as  a  harvest  festival. 
The  resurrection  of  the  corn-spirit,  represented  by 
setting  up  the  stuffed  ox  and  yoking  it  to  the  plough, 
may  be  compared  with  the  resurrection  of  the  tree- 
spirit  in  the  person  of  his  representative,  the  Wild 
Man.^ 

The  ox  appears  as  a  representative  of  the  corn- 
spirit  in  other  parts  of  the  world.  At  Great  Bassam, 
in  Guinea,  two  oxen  are  slain  annually  to  procure  a 
good  harvest.  If  the  sacrifice  is  to  be  effectual,  it  is 
necessary  that  the  oxen  should  weep.  So  all  the 
women  of  the  village  sit  in  front  of  the  beasts,  chant- 
ing, "  The  ox  will  weep  ;  yes,  he  will  weep  ! "  From 
time  to  time  one  of  the  women  walks  round  the  beasts, 
throwing  manioc  meal  or  palm  wine  upon  them,  espe- 
cially into  their  eyes.  When  tears  roll  down  from  the 
eyes  of  the  oxen,  the  people  dance,  singing,  "  The  ox 

^  See  above,  vol.  i.  p.  243. 


42  ox  REPRESENTS 


weeps  !  the  ox  weeps  ! "  Then  two  men  seize  the  tails 
of  the  beasts  and  cut  them  off  at  one  blow.  It  is 
believed  that  a  great  misfortune  will  happen  in  the 
course  of  the  year  if  the  tails  are  not  severed  at  one 
blow.  The  oxen  are  afterwards  killed,  and  their  flesh 
is  eaten  by  the  chiefs.^  Here  the  tears  of  the  oxen, 
like  those  of  the  human  victims  amongst  the  Khonds, 
are  probably  a  rain -charm.  We  have  already  seen 
that  the  virtue  of  the  corn-spirit,  embodied  in  animal 
form,  is  sometimes  supposed  to  reside  in  the  tail,  and 
that  the  last  handful  of  corn  is  sometimes  conceived  as 
the  tail  of  the  corn-spirit.^  Still  more  clearly  does  the 
ox  appear  as  a  personification  of  the  corn-spirit  in  a 
ceremony  which  is  observed  in  all  the  provinces  and 
districts  of  China  to  welcome  the  approach  of  spring. 
On  the  first  day  of  spring  the  governor  or  prefect  of 
the  city  goes  in  procession  to  the  east  gate  of  the  city, 
and  sacrifices  to  the  Divine  Husbandman,  who  is 
represented  with  a  bull's  head  on  the  body  of  a  man. 
A  large  effigy  of  an  ox,  cow,  or  bufTalo  has  been  pre- 
pared for  the  occasion,  and  stands  outside  of  the  east 
gate,  with  agricultural  implements  beside  it.  It  is 
made  of  differently-coloured  pieces  of  paper  pasted  on 
a  framework  either  by  a  blind  man  or  according  to  the 
directions  of  a  necromancer.  The  colours  of  the  paper 
indicate  the  character  of  the  coming  year ;  if  red  pre- 
vails, there  will  be  many  fires  ;  if  white,  there  will  be 
floods  and  rain,  etc.  The  mandarins  walk  slowly 
round  the  ox,  beating  it  severely  at  each  step  with  rods 
of  various  colours.  It  is  filled  with  five  kinds  of  grain, 
which  pour  forth  when  the  ox  is  broken  by  the  blows 
of  the  rods.     The  paper  fragments  are  then  set  on  fire, 

1  Hecquard,  Reise  an  die  Kiiste  uml  in  das  lunere  von    West-Afrika,   jDp. 
41-43'  ^  Above,  p.  3,  and  vol.  i.  p.  408. 


Ill  THE   SPIRIT  OF    VEGETATION  43 

and  a  scramble  takes  place  for  the  burning  fragments, 
as  the  people  believe  that  whoever  gets  one  of  them  is 
sure  to  be  fortunate  throughout  the  year.  A  live 
buffalo  is  then  killed,  and  its  flesh  is  divided  among 
the  mandarins.  According  to  one  account,  the  effigy 
of  the  ox  is  made  of  clay,  and,  after  being  beaten  by 
the  governor,  is  stoned  by  the  people  till  they  break  it 
in  pieces,  "from  which  they  expect  an  abundant 
year."^  Here  the  corn-spirit  appears  to  be  plainly 
represented  by  the  corn -filled  ox,  whose  fragments 
may  therefore  be  supposed  to  bring  fertility  with  them. 
We  may  compare  the  Silesian  spring  custom  of  burn- 
ing the  effigy  of  Death,  scrambling  for  the  burning 
fragments,  and  burying  them  in  the  fields  to  secure  a 
good  crop,  and  the  Florentine  custom  of  sawing  the 
Old  Woman  and  scrambling  for  the  dried  fruits  with 
which  she  was  filled.^ 

On  the  whole,  then,  we  may  perhaps  conclude  that 
both  as  a  goat  and  as  a  bull  Dionysus  was  essentially 
a  god  of  vegetation.  The  Chinese  and  European 
customs  just  referred  to  may  perhaps  shed  light  on 
the  custom  of  rending  a  live  bull  or  goat  at  the  rites  of 
Dionysus.  The  animal  was  torn  in  fragments,  as  the 
Khond  victim  was  cut  in  pieces,  in  order  that  the 
worshippers  might  each  secure  a  portion  of  the  life- 
giving  and  fertilising  influence  of  the  god.  The  flesh 
was  eaten  raw  as  a  sacrament,  and  we  may  conjecture 
that  some  of  it  was  taken  home  to  be  buried  in  the 
fields,  or  otherwise  employed  so ,  as  to  convey  to  the 
fruits  of  the  earth  the  quickening  influence  of  the  god 
of  vegetation.     The  resurrection  of  Dionysus,  related 


1  China  Review,  i.  62,  154,  162,  203  sq. ;  Doolittle,  Social  Life  of  the  Chinese, 
p.  375  sq.,  ed.  Paxton  Hood  ;  Gray,  China,  ii.  115  sq. 

2  Above,  vol.  i.  pp.  261,  267. 


44  DE METER  AND  PROSERPINE  chap. 

in  his  myth,  may  have  been  represented  in  his  rites  by 
stuffing  and  setting  up  the  slain  ox,  as  was  done  at  the 
Athenian  bonphonia. 

Passing  next  to  the  corn -goddess  Demeter,  and 
remembering  that  in  European  folk-lore  the  pig  is  a 
common  embodiment  of  the  corn-spirit,^  we  may  now 
ask,  may  not  the  pig,  which  was  so  closely  associated 
with  Demeter,  be  nothing  but  the  goddess  herself  in 
animal  form  ?  The  pig  was  sacred  to  her  ;  ^  in  art  she 
was  represented  carrying  or  accompanied  by  a  pig ;  ^ 
and  the  pig  was  regularly  sacrificed  in  her  mysteries, 
the  reason  assigned  being  that  the  pig  injures  the  corn 
and  is  therefore  an  enemy  of  the  goddess.^  But  after 
an  animal  has  been  conceived  as  a  god  or  a  god  as  an 
animal,  it  sometimes  happens,  as  we  have  seen,  that 
the  god  sloughs  off  his  animal  form  and  becomes 
purely  anthropomorphic  ;  and  that  then  the  animal, 
which  at  first  had  been  slain  in  the  character  of  the 
god,  comes  to  be  regarded  as  a  victim  offered  to  the 
god  on  the  ground  of  its  hostility  to  the  deity  ;  in 
short,  that  the  god  is  sacrificed  to  himself  on  the 
ground  that  he  is  his  own  enemy.  This  happened  to 
Dionysus,  and  it  may  have  happened  to  Demeter  also. 
And  in  fact  the  rites  of  one  of  her  festivals,  the  Thes- 
mophoria,  bear  out  the  view  that  originally  the  pig 
was  an  embodiment  of  the  corn-goddess  herself,  either 
Demeter  or  her  daughter  and  double  Proserpine.  The 
Thesmophoria  was  an  autumn  festival,  celebrated  by 
women  alone  in  October,^  and  appears  to  have  repre- 

1  See  above,  p.  26  sqq.  De  nat.   dear.   c.   28  ;  Macrobius,  Sat. 

2  Schol.   on   Aristophanes,   Acharn.      i.    12,    23  ;    Schol.    on    Aristophanes, 
747,  Acharn.     747  ;     id.     on    Progs,     338  ; 

^  Overbeck,       Gi'iechische      Kunst-  id.      on     Peace,      374 ;      Servius     on 

mythologie,   ii.   493  ;    MUller-Wieseler,  Virgil,    Georg.   ii.    380 ;    Aehan,  Nat. 

Denkmdler  d.  alt.  Kunst,  ii.  pi.  viii.  94.  Anim.  x.  16. 

*  Hyginus,     Pab.     277  ;    Cornutus,  ^  For  the  authorities  on   the  Thes- 


AS  PIGS 


45 


sented  with  mourning  rites  the  descent  of  Proserpine 
(or  Demeter)  ^  into  the  lower  world,  and  with  joy  her 
return  from  the  dead.^  Hence  the  name  Descent  or 
Ascent  variously  applied  to  the  first,  and  the  name 
Kalligeneia  (fair-born)  applied  to  the  third  day  of  the 
festival.  Now  from  a  scholion  on  Lucian,  first  edited 
in  1870,^  we  learn  some  details  about  the  mode  of 
celebrating  the  Thesmophoria,  which  shed  important 
light  on  the  part  of  the  festival  called  the  Descent  or 
the  Ascent.  The  scholiast  tells  us  that  it  was  cus- 
tomary at  the  Thesmophoria  to  throw  pigs,  cakes  of 
dough,  and  branches  of  pine-trees  into  "  the  chasms  of 
Demeter  and  Proserpine,"  which  appear  to  have  been 
sacred  caverns  or  vaults.*  In  these  caverns  or  vaults 
there  were  said  to  be  serpents,  which  guarded  the 
caverns  and  consumed  most  of  the  flesh  of  the  pigs 
and  dough -cakes  which  were  thrown  in.  Afterwards 
— apparently  at  the  next  annual  festival  ^ — the  decayed 

mophoria    and   a   discussion    of    some  ■*  The  scholiast  speaks   of  them  as 

doubtful  points   in   the  festival,  I  may  niegara   and   adyta.      Megara   (from    a 

be    permitted    to    refer    to    my  article  Phoenician  word    meaning    "cavern," 

" Thesmophoria "  in  the  ^«fyr/i!7/rt^^M  "subterranean    chasm,"    Movers,   Die 

Britannica,  ninth  ed.  Phoeiiiziei-,  i.  220)   were  properly  sub- 

1  Photius,  s.v.  aTT)via,  speaks  of  the  terranean  vaults  or  chasms  sacred   to 

ascent    of    Demeter   from    the    lower  '^^  S°^^-      See  Hesychius,  quoted  by 

world;    and    Clement    of   Alexandria  Movers,^   I.e.    (the    passage    does    not 

speaks  of  both  Demeter  and  Proserpine  ''^PPear  m  M.  Schmidt's  minor  edition 

as  having  been  engulfed  in  the  chasm  °^   Hesychius) ;    Porphyry,    De   antra 

{Protrept.  ii.  §  17).     The  original  equi-  "i'fA^-  6- 

valence    of   Demeter    and    Proserpine  ''  ^^^  '"^^^  *^'S  fro""  Pausanias,  ix. 

must  be  borne  steadily  in  mind.  ^'  ^'  though  the  passage  is  incomplete 

9  -ni  ^      ,     r  •    .  ^  •  •    ^      T^,     •  ^""^     apparently     corrupt.       For      iv 

-.  Plutarch, /«..^0«r^.,  69;  Photms,  Aco5c6.„     Lobeck     proposes     to     read 

'  avaovvcLi.  or  avaOoOrjvai..     At   the  sprmg 

3  E.    Rohde,  ^  "  Unedirte    Lucians-  and  autumn  festivals  of  Isis  at  Tithorea 

scholien,  die  attischen  Thesmophorien  geese  and  goats  were  thrown  into  the 

und  Haloen  betreffend,"  in  Rheinisches  adyton  and  left  there  till  the  following 

Mtiseiim,     N.    F.    xxv.     (1S70)     548  festival,    when    the    remains    were    re- 

sqq.     Two  passages  of  classical  writers  moved  and  buried  at  a  certain  spot  a 

(Clemens  Alex.,  i°ra/';r/i'.  ii.  §   17  and  little  way  from  the  temple.      Pausanias, 

Pausanias,  ix.  8,  i)   refer  to   the  rites  x.  32,  14  (9).     This  analogy  supports 

•described  by  the  Scholiast  on  Lucian,  the  view  that  the  pigs  thrown  into  the 

and    had  been   rightly   interpreted  by  caverns  at  the  Thesmophoria  were  left 

Lobeck  {Aglaophamus,  p.  827  sqq.)  there  till  the  next  festival. 


46  DE METER  AND  PROSERPINE  chap. 

remains  of  the  pigs,  the  cakes,  and  the  pine-branches 
were  fetched  by  women  called  "  drawers,"  who,  after 
observing  rules  of  ceremonial  purity  for  three  days, 
descended  into  the  caverns,  and,  frightening  away  the 
serpents  by  clapping  their  hands,  brought  up  the 
remains  and  placed  them  on  the  altar.  Whoever  got 
a  piece  of  the  decayed  flesh  and  cakes,  and  sowed  it 
with  the  seed-corn  in  his  field,  was  believed  to  be  sure 
of  a  good  crop. 

To  explain  this  rude  and  ancient  rite  the  follow- 
ing legend  was  told.  At  the  moment  that  Pluto 
carried  off  Proserpine,  a  swineherd  called  Eubuleus 
was  herding  his  swine  on  the  spot,  and  his  herd  was 
engulfed  in  the  chasm  down  which  Pluto  vanished 
with  Proserpine.  Accordingly  at  the  Thesmophoria 
pigs  were  annually  thrown  into  caverns  in  order 
to  commemorate  the  disappearance  of  the  swine  of 
Eubuleus.  It  follows  from  this  that  the  casting  of  the 
pigs  into  the  vaults  at  the  Thesmophoria  formed  part 
of  the  dramatic  representation  of  Proserpine's  descent 
into  the  lower  world  ;  and  as  no  image  of  Proserpine 
appears  to  have  been  thrown  in,  it  follows  that  the 
descent  of  the  pigs  must  have  been,  not  an  accompani- 
ment of  her  descent,  but  the  descent  itself;  in  short, 
the  pigs  were  Proserpine.  Afterwards  when  Proser- 
pine or  Demeter  (for  the  two  are  equivalent)  became 
anthropomorphic,  a  reason  had  to  be  found  for  the 
custom  of  throwing  pigs  into  caverns  at  her  festival ; 
and  this  was  done  by  saying  that  when  Proserpine  was 
carried  off,  there  happened  to  be  some  swine  browsing 
near,  which  were  swallowed  up  along  with  her.  The 
story  is  obviously  a  forced  and  awkward  attempt  to 
bridge  over  the  gulf  between  the  old  conception  of  the 
corn-spirit  as  a  pig  and  the  new  conception  of  her  as 


in  AS  PIGS  47 

an  anthropomorphic  goddess.  A  trace  of  the  older 
conception  survived  in  the  legend  that  when  Demeter 
was  looking  for  the  lost  Proserpine,  the  footprints  of 
the  latter  were  obliterated  by  the  footprints  of  a  pig  ;  ^ 
originally,  no  doubt,  the  footprints  of  the  pig  were  the 
footprints  of  Proserpine  and  of  Demeter  herself  A 
consciousness  of  the  intimate  connection  of  the  pig 
with  the  corn  lurks  in  the  tradition  that  the  swineherd 
Eubuleus  was  a  brother  of  Triptolemus,  to  whom 
Demeter  first  imparted  the  secret  of  the  corn.  Indeed, 
according  to  one  version  of  the  story,  Eubuleus  him- 
self received,  jointly  with  his  brother  Triptolemus,  the 
gift  of  the  corn  from  Demeter  as  a  reward  for  revealing 
to  her  the  fate  of  Proserpine.^  Further,  it  is  to  be 
noted  that  at  the  Thesmophoria  the  women  appear  to 
have  eaten  swine's  flesh.^  The  meal,  if  I  am  right, 
must  have  been  a  solemn  sacrament  or  communion, 
the  worshippers  partaking  of  the  body  of  the  god. 

As  thus  explained,  the  Thesmophoria  has  its  ana- 
logies in  the  folk-customs  of  Northern  Europe  which 
have  been  already  described.  As  at  the  Thesmo- 
phoria— an  autumn  festival  in  honour  of  the  corn- 
goddess — swine's  flesh  was  partly  eaten,  partly  kept  in 
caverns  till  the  following  year,  when  it  was  taken  up 
to  be  sown  with  the  seed-corn  in  the  fields  for  the 
purpose  of  securing  a'  good  crop  ;  so  in  the  neighbour- 
hood of  Grenoble  the  goat  killed  on  the  harvest-field 
is  partly  eaten  at  the  harvest  supper,  partly  pickled 
and  kept  till  the  next  harvest  ;*  so  at  Pouilly  the  ox 
killed  on  the  harvest-field  is  partly  eaten  by  the  har- 
vesters,  partly  pickled  and   kept  till  the   first  day  of 

1  Ovid,    Fasti,    iv.    461-466,    upon  -  Pausanias,  i.  14,  3. 

which    Gierig   remarks,    ''Sues   melius  3  Schol.     on     Aristophanes,     Frogs, 

poeta  omisisset  ill  Iiac  narratio7ie"   Such  338. 
is  the  wisdom  of  the  commentator.  ■*  Above,  p.  1 5  sq. 


48  DE METER  AND  PROSERPINE  chap. 

sowing  in  spring  ^ — probably  to  be  then  mixed  with 
the  seed,  or  eaten  by  the  ploughmen,  or  both  ;  so  at 
Udvarhely  the  feathers  of  the  cock  which  is  killed  in 
the  last  sheaf  at  harvest  are  kept  till  spring,  and  then 
sown  with  the  seed  on  the  field  p  so  in  Hessen  and 
Meiningen  the  flesh  of  pigs  is  eaten  on  Ash  Wednesday 
or  Candlemas,  and  the  bones  are  kept  till  sowing-time, 
when  they  are  put  into  the  field  sown  or  mixed  with 
the  seed  in  the  bag  ;^  so,  lastly,  the  corn  from  the  last 
sheaf  is  kept  till  Christmas,  made  into  the  Yule  Boar, 
and  afterwards  broken  and  mixed  with  the  seed-corn 
at  sowing  in  spring.^  Thus,  to  put  it  generally,  the 
corn-spirit  is  killed  in  animal  form  in  autumn  ;  part  of 
his  flesh  is  eaten  as  a  sacrament  by  his  worshippers  ; 
and  part  of  it  is  kept  till  next  sowing-time  or  harvest  as 
a  pledge  and  security  for  the  continuance  or  renewal 
of  the  corn-spirit's  energies.  Whether  in  the  interval 
between  autumn  and  spring  he  is  conceived  as  dead, 
or  whether,  like  the  ox  in  the  doitpkonia,  he  is  supposed 
to  come  to  life  again  immediately  after  being  killed,  Is 
not  clear.  At  the  Thesmophoria,  according  to  Clem- 
ent and  Pausanias,  as  emended  by  Lobeck,^  the  pigs 
were  thrown  in  alive,  and  were  supposed  to  reappear 
at  the  festival  of  the  following  year.  Here,  therefore, 
if  we  accept  Lobeck's  emendations,  the  corn-spirit  is 
conceived  as  alive  throughout  the  year  ;  he  lives  and 
works  under  ground,  but  is  brought  up  each  autumn  to  be 
renewed  and  then  replaced  in  his  subterranean  abode.'' 


1  Above,  p.  20  sq.        -  Above,  p.  9.  6  j^  j^  vvorth  noting  that  in  Crete, 

3  Above,  p.  29.      *  Above,  p.  29  si].  which  was  an  ancient  seat  of  Demeter 

s  In  Clemens  Alex.,  Protrept.  ii.  17,  worship  (see  above,  vol.  i.  p.  331),  the 

for    fj.fyapi^ovT€S     xo^po^^      eK^dWovai  pig  was  esteemed  very  sacred  and  was 

Lobeck  {Aglaophamus,  p.  831)  would  not    eaten,    Athenaeus,    375   F-376   A. 

read  /ie7dpoij  fwiras  xo^poi^s  eVjSdXXoi'crt.  This  would  not  exclude  the  possibility 

Yox  his  emendation  of  Pausanias,   see  of  its  being  eaten  sacramentally,  as  at 

above,  p.  45.  the  Thesmophoria. 


Ill  AS  FIGS  49 

If  it  is  objected  that  the  Greeks  never  could 
have  conceived  Demeter  and  Proserpine  to  be 
embodied  in  the  form  of  pigs,  it  may  be  answered  that 
in  the  cave  of  PhigaHa  in  Arcadia  the  Black  Demeter 
was  represented  with  the  head  and  mane  of  a  horse  on 
the  body  of  a  woman.^  Between  the  representation  of 
a  goddess  as  a  pig,  and  the  representation  of  her  as  a 
woman  with  a  horse's  head,  there  is  little  to  choose  in 
respect  of  barbarism.  The  legend  told  of  the  Phi- 
galian  Demeter  indicates  that  the  horse  was  one  of  the 
animal  forms  assumed  in  ancient  Greece,  as  in  modern 
Europe,-  by  the  corn-spirit.  It  was  said  that  in  her 
search  for  her  daughter,  Demeter  assumed  the  form  of 
a  mare  to  escape  the  addresses  of  Poseidon,  and  that, 
offended  at  his  importunity,  she  withdrew  to  the  cave 
of  Phigalia.  There,  robed  in  black,  she  stayed  so  long 
that  the  fruits  of  the  earth  were  perishing,  and  man- 
kind would  have  died  of  famine  if  Pan  had  not  soothed 
the  angry  goddess  and  persuaded  her  to  quit  the  cave. 
In  memory  of  this  event,  the  Phigalians  set  up  an 
image  of  the  Black  Demeter  in  the  cave  ;  it  represented 
a  woman  dressed  in  a  long  robe,  with  the  head  and 
mane  of  a  horse.^  The  Black  Demeter,  in  whose 
absence  the  fruits  of  the  earth  perish,  is  plainly  a 
mythical  expression  for  the  state  of  vegetation  in 
winter. 

Passing  now  to  Attis  and  Adonis,  we  may  note  a 
few  facts  which  seem  to  show  that  these  deities  of 
vegetation  had  also,  like  other  deities  of  vegetation, 
their  animal  embodiments.  The  worshippers  of  Attis 
abstained  from  eating  the  flesh  of  swine.*     This  fact  is 

1  Pausanias,  viii.  42.  Phigalian  Demeter,  see  W.  Mannhardt, 

2  Above,  p.  24  si/t/.  M.  F.  p.  244  sqq. 

3  Pausanias,  viii.  25  and  42.     On  the  *  Above,  vol.  i.  p.  296  sq. 

VOL.   II  E 


so  ATTIS  AND  ADONIS  chap. 

certainly  in  favour  of  supposing  that  the  pig  was 
regarded  as  an  embodiment  of  Attis.  And  the  legend 
that  Attis  was  killed  by  a  boar^  points  in  the  same 
direction.  For  after  the  examples  of  the  goat  Diony- 
sus and  the  pig  Demeter  it  may  almost  be  laid  down 
as  a  rule  that  an  animal  which  is  said  to  have  injured 
a  god  was  originally  the  god  himself.  Perhaps  the  cry 
of  "  Hyes  Attes  !  Hyes  Attes!"^  which  was  raised  by  the 
worshippers  of  Attis,  may  be  neither  more  nor  less  than 
"  Pig  Attis  !  Pig  Attis  !  " — hyes  being  possibly  a  Phry- 
gian form  of  the  Greek  hys,  "a  pig." 

In  regard  to  Adonis,  his  connection  with  the  boar 
was  not  always  explained  by  the  story  that  he  was  killed 
by  a  boar.  According  to  another  story,  a  boar  rent 
with  his  tusk  the  bark  of  the  tree  in  which  the  infant 
Adonis  was  born.^  According  to  another  story,  he  was 
killed  by  Hephaestus  on  Mount  Lebanon  while  he  was 
hunting  wild  boars.*  These  variations  in  the  legend 
serve  to  show  that,  while  the  connection  of  the  boar  with 
Adonis  was  certain,  the  reason  of  the  connection  was 
not  understood,  and  that  consequently  different  stories 
were  devised  to  explain  it.  Certainly  the  pig  was 
one  of  the  sacred  animals  of  the  Syrians,  At  the  great 
religious  metropolis  of  Hierapolis  pigs  were  neither 
sacrificed  nor  eaten,  and  if  a  man  touched  a  pig  he 
was  unclean  for  the  rest  of  the  day.  Some  people 
said  this  was  because  the  pigs  were  unclean  ;  others 
said  it  was  because  the  pigs  were  sacred.^  This  differ- 
ence of  opinion  points  to  a  state  of  religious  thought 
and  feeling  in  which  the  ideas  of  sanctity  and  unclean- 
ness    are    not    yet    differentiated,    and    which    is    best 


1  Above,  vol.  i.  p.  296.  ■*  Cureton,  Spidkgiiim  Sy7-iacHm,  p. 

2  Demosthenes,  De  corona,  p.  313.        44. 

3  Above,  vol.  i.  p.  281.  5  Lucian,  Dc  dea  Syria,  54. 


Ill  AS  PIGS  51 

indicated  by  the  word  taboo.  It  is  quite  consistent 
with  this  that  the  pig  should  have  been  held  to  be 
an  embodiment  of  the  divine  Adonis,  and  the  analogies 
of  Dionysus  and  Demeter  make  it  probable  that  the 
story  of  the  hostility  of  the  animal  to  the  god  was  only 
a  modern  misunderstanding  of  the  old  view  of  the  god 
as  embodied  in  a  pig.  The  rule  that  pigs  were  not 
sacrificed  or  eaten  by  worshippers  of  Attis  and  pre- 
sumably of  Adonis,  does  not  exclude  the  possibility 
that  in  these  cults  the  pig  was  slain  on  solemn  occa- 
sions as  a  representative  of  the  god  and  consumed 
sacramentally  by  the  worshippers.  Indeed,  the  sacra- 
mental killing  and  eating  of  an  animal,  that  is  the 
killing  and  eating  it  as  a  god,  implies  that  the  animal 
is  sacred,  and  is,  as  a  general  rule,  not  killed.^ 

The  attitude  of  the  Jews  to  the  pig  was  as 
ambiguous  as  that  of  the  heathen  Syrians  towards 
the  same  animal.  The  Greeks  could  not  decide 
whether  the  Jews  worshipped  swine  or  abominated 
them.  On  the  one  hand  they  might  not  eat 
swine  ;  but  on  the  other  hand  they  might  not  kill 
them.'^  And  if  the  former  rule  speaks  for  the 
uncleanness,  the  latter  speaks  still  more  strongly 
for  the  sanctity  of  the  animal.  For  whereas  both 
rules  may,  and  one  rule  must,  be  explained  on  the 
supposition  that  the  pig  was  sacred ;  neither  rule 
must,  and  one  rule  cannot,  be  explained  on  the 
supposition  that  the  pig  was  unclean.  If,  therefore, 
we  prefer  the  former  supposition,  we  must   conclude 


1  The  heathen  Harranians  sacrificed  sacrificed     in      Cyprus     on     2d     April 

swine  once  a  year  and  ate  the  flesh  ;  (Joannes  Lydus,  De  mensibiis,  iv.  45) 

En-Nedim,  in  Chwolsohn's  Die  Ssabicr  represented  Adonis    himself.      See   his 

mid  der  Ssabismus,  ii.    42.   My  friend  Religion    of  the    Semites,    i.    272    sq.. 

Professor  W.  Robertson  Smith  has  con-  392. 
jectured  that  the  wild   boars  annually  2  piutarch,  Qnaest.  Conviv.  iv.  5. 


52 


OSIRIS 


that,  originally  at  least,  the  pig  was  held  to  be  sacred 
rather  than  unclean  by  the  Israelites.  This  is  confirmed 
by  the  fact  that  down  to  the  time  of  Isaiah  some 
of  the  Jews  used  to  meet  secretly  in  gardens  to  eat 
the  flesh  of  swine  and  mice  as  a  religious  rite.^ 
Doubtless  this  was  a  very  ancient  rite,  dating  from 
a  time  when  both  the  pig  and  the  mouse  were 
venerated  as  divine,  and  when  their  flesh  was 
partaken  of  sacramentally  on  rare  and  solemn 
occasions  as  the  body  and  blood  of  gods.  And 
in  general  it  may  be  said  that  all  so-called  unclean 
animals  were  originally  sacred  ;  the  reason  why 
they  were  not  eaten  was  that  they  were  divine. 

In  ancient  Egypt,  within  historical  times,  the  pig 
occupied  the  same  dubious  position  as  in  Syria  and 
Palestine,  though  at  first  sight  its  uncleanness  is 
more  prominent  than  its  sanctity.  The  Egyptians 
are  generally  said  by  Greek  writers  to  have  abhorred 
the  pig  as  a  foul  and  loathsome  animal."  If  a  man 
so  much  as  touched  a  pig  in  passing,  he  stepped 
into  the  river  with  all  his  clothes  on,  to  wash  off 
the  taint. ^  To  drink  pig's  milk  was  believed  to  cause 
leprosy  to  the  drinker.^  Swineherds,  though  natives 
of  Egypt,  were  forbidden  to  enter  any  temple,  and 
they  were  the  only  men  who  were  thus  excluded. 
No  one  would  give  his  daughter  in  marriage  to  a 
swineherd,  or  marry  a  swineherd's  daughter ;  the 
swineherds  married  amonof  themselves.^  Yet  once 
a  year  the  Egyptians  sacrificed  pigs  to  the  moon 
and  to  Osiris,  and  not  only  sacrificed  them,  but  ate 
of  their  flesh,  though  on  any  other  clay  of  the   year 


1  Isaiah  Ixv.  3,  4,  Ixvi.  3,   17.  ^  Herodotus,  Lc. 

2  Herodotus,   ii.    47  ;   Plutarch,   Isis  *   Phitarch  and  Aelian,  II. cc. 
et  Osiris,  8;  Aelian,  Nat.  Aniiii.  x.  16.  ^  Herodotus,  I.e. 


Ill  AS  A   PIG  53 

they  would  neither  sacrifice  them  nor  taste  of  their 
flesh.  Those  who  were  too  poor  to  offer  a  pig  on 
this  day  baked  cakes  of  dough,  and  offered  them 
instead.^  This  can  hardly  be  explained  except  by 
the  supposition  that  the  pig  was  a  sacred  animal 
which  was  eaten  sacramentally  by  his  worshippers 
once  a  year.  The  view  that  in  Egypt  the  pig  was 
a  sacred  animal  is  borne  out  by  the  very  facts  which, 
to  moderns,  might  seem  to  prove  the  contrary.  Thus 
the  Egyptians  thought,  as  we  have  seen,  that  to  drink 
pig's  milk  produced  leprosy.  But  exactly  analogous 
views  are  held  by  savages  about  the  animals  and 
plants  which  they  deem  most  sacred.  Thus  in  the 
island  of  Wetar  (between  New  Guinea  and  Celebes) 
people  believe  themselves  to  be  variously  descended 
from  wild  pigs,  serpents,  crocodiles,  turtles,  dogs,  and 
eels  ;  a  man  may  not  eat  an  animal  of  the  kind  from 
which  he  is  descended  ;  if  he  does  so,  he  will  become 
a  leper,  and  go  mad.^  Amongst  the  Omaha  Indians 
of  North  America  men  whose  totem  (sacred  animal  or 
plant)  is  the  elk,  believe  that  if  they  ate  the  flesh  of 
the  male  elk  they  would  break  out  in  boils  and  white 
spots  in  different  parts  of  their  bodies.^  In  the  same 
tribe  men  whose  totem  is  the  red  maize,  think  that 
if  they  ate  red  maize  they  would  have  running  sores 
all  round  their  mouths.^  The  Bush  negroes  of  Surinam, 
who  have  totemism,  believe  that  if  they  ate  the  capiat 

1  Herodotus,  ii.  47  sq.;  Aelian  and  the    sacrifice    to    Osiris    took    place. 

Plutarch, //.a-.     Herodotus  distinguishes  Each  man  slew  a  pig   before  his  door, 

the  sacrifice  to  the  moon  from  that  to  then    gave  it   to   the   swineherd,   from 

Osiris.       According    to    him,    at     the  whom  he  had  bought  it,  to  take  away, 
sacrifice  to  the  moon,  the  extremity  of  ^   Riedel,     De    slidk-m    kroesharige 

the  pig's  tail,  together  with  the  spleen  rassen  tusschen  Selebes  en  Papua,   pp. 

and   the   caul,    were  covered   with  fat  432,  452. 

and  burned  ;  the   rest   of  the  flesh  was  ■*    Thii-d  Annual  Report  of  the  Bureau 

eaten.      On  the  evening  (not  the  eve,  of  Ethnology  ^?^%\'\VLig\.oxi),  p.  225. 
see  Stein  on  the  passage)  of  the  festival  ^  Ih.  p.  231. 


54  OSIRIS  CHAP. 

(an  animal  like  a  pig)  it  would  give  them  leprosy  ;^ 
probably  the  capim  is  one  of  their  totems.  In  Samoa 
each  man  had  generally  his  god  in  the  shape  of  some 
species  of  animal ;  and  if  he  ate  one  of  these  divine 
animals,  it  was  supposed  that  the  god  avenged  himself 
by  taking  up  his  abode  in  the  eater's  body,  and  there 
generating  an  animal  of  the  kind  he  had  eaten  till  it 
caused  his  death.  For  example,  if  a  man  whose  god 
was  the  prickly  sea-urchin,  ate  one  of  these  creatures, 
a  prickly  sea-urchin  grew  in  his  stomach  and  killed 
him.  If  his  god  was  an  eel,  and  he  ate  an  eel,  he 
became  very  ill,  and  before  he  died  the  voice  of  the 
god  was  heard  from  his  stomach  saying,  "  I  am  killing 
this  man  ;  he  ate  my  incarnation."  ^  These  examples 
prove  that  the  eating  of  a  sacred  animal  is  often 
believed  to  produce  skin -disease  or  even  death  ;  so 
far,  therefore,  they  support  the  view  that  the  pig 
must  have  been  sacred  in  Egypt,  since  the  effect  of 
drinking  its  milk  was  believed  to  be  leprosy. 

Again,  the  rule  that,  after  touching  a  pig,  a  man 
had  to  wash  himself  and  his  clothes,  also  favours  the 
view  of  the  sanctity  of  the  pig.  For  it  is  a  common 
belief  that  the  effect  of  contact  with  a  sacred  object 
must  be  removed,  by  washing  or  otherwise,  before 
a  man  is  free  to  mingle  with  his  fellows.  Thus  the 
Jews  wash  their  hands  after  reading  the  sacred 
scriptures.  Before  coming  forth  from  the  tabernacle 
after  the  sin-offering,  the  high  priest  had  to  wash 
himself,  and  put  off  the  garments  which  he  had  worn 
in  the  holy  place.^  It  was  a  rule  of  Greek  ritual 
that,  in  offering  an  expiatory  sacrifice,  the  sacrificer 
should    not    touch    the    sacrifice,    and    that,    after   the 

1  J.  Crevaux,  Voyages  dam  VAmh-i-  2  Turner,  Samoa,  pp.  17  sq.,  50  sq. 

que  nil  Sud,  p.  59.  3   Leviticus  xvi.  23  sq. 


Ill  AS  A   PIG  55 

offering  was  made,  he  must  wash  his  body  and  his 
clothes  in  a  river  or  spring  before  he  could  enter 
a  city  or  his  own  house/  The  Polynesians  felt 
strongly  the  need  of  ridding  themselves  of  the  sacred 
contagion,  if  it  may  be  so  called,  which  they  caught 
by  touching  sacred  objects.  Various  ceremonies  were 
performed  for  the  purpose  of  removing  this  sacred 
contagion.  For  example,  in  Tonga  a  man  who 
happened  to  touch  a  sacred  chief,  or  anything  per- 
sonally belonging  to  him,  as  his  clothes  or  his  mat, 
was  obliged  to  go  through  the  ceremony  of  touching 
the  soles  of  the  chief's  (or  of  any  chief's)  feet  with 
his  hands,  first  applying  the  palm  and  then  the  back 
of  each  hand  ;  next  he  had  to  rinse  his  hands  in  water, 
or,  if  there  was  no  water  near,  the  sap  of  the  plantain 
or  banana-tree  mio^ht  be  used  as  a  substitute.  If  he 
were  to  feed  himself  with  his  hands  before  he  per- 
formed this  ceremony,  it  was  believed  that  he  would 
swell  up  and  die,  or  at  least  be  afflicted  with  scrofula 
or  some  other  disease.^  We  have  already  seen  what 
fatal  effects  are  supposed  to  follow,  and  do  actually 
follow,  from  contact  with  a  sacred  object  in  New 
Zealand.^  In  short,  primitive  man  believes  that  what 
is  sacred  is  dangerous  ;  it  is  pervaded  by  a  sort  of 
electrical  sanctity  which  communicates  a  shock  to, 
even  if  it  does  not  kill,  whatever  comes  in  contact 
with  it.  Hence  the  savage  is  unwilling  to  touch 
or  even  to  see  that  which  he  deems  peculiarly  holy. 
Thus  Bechuanas,  of  the  Crocodile  clan,  think  it 
"  hateful  and  unlucky  "  to  meet  or  see  a  crocodile  ; 
the  sight    is    thought   to    cause    inflammation    of  the 

1   Porphyry,  De  abstin.  ii.  44.      For  '^  Mariner,    Tonga    Islands,    i.    434, 

this    and    the  Jewish    examples    I    am  note ;  ii.  82,  222  sq. 

indebted  to  my  friend  Prof.  W.  Robert-  ^  Above,  vol.  i.  p.   167  sqq. 
son  Smith 


56  OSIRIS  CHAP. 

eyes.  Yet  the  crocodile  is  their  most  sacred  object  ; 
they  call  it  their  father,  swear  by  it,  and  celebrate 
it  in  their  festivals.^  The  goat  is  the  sacred  animal 
of  the  Madenassana  Bushmen;  yet  "to  look  upon 
it  would  be  to  render  the  man  for  the  time  impure, 
as  well  as  to  cause  him  undefined  uneasiness."^  The 
Elk  clan,  among  the  Omaha  Indians,  believe  that 
even  to  touch  the  male  elk  would  be  followed  by  an 
eruption  of  boils  and  white  spots  on  the  body.^ 
Members  of  the  Reptile  clan  in  the  same  tribe  think 
that  if  one  of  them  touches  or  smells  a  snake,  it  will 
make  his  hair  white.^  In  Samoa  people  whose  god 
was  a  butterfly  believed  that  if  they  caught  a  butterfly 
it  would  strike  them  dead.^  Again,  in  Samoa  the 
reddish -seared  leaves  of  the  banana-tree  were  com- 
monly used  as  plates  for  handing  food  ;  but  if  any 
member  of  the  Wild  Pigeon  clan  had  used  banana 
leaves  for  this  purpose,  it  was  believed  that  he  would 
have  suffered  from  rheumatic  swellings  or  an  eruption 
all  over  the  body  like  chicken-pox.*' 

In  the  light  of  these  parallels  the  beliefs  and 
customs  of  the  Egyptians  touching  the  pig  are  prob- 
ably to  be  explained  as  based  upon  an  opinion  of 
the  extreme  sanctity  rather  than  of  the  extreme 
uncleanness  of  the  animal ;  or  rather,  to  put  it  more 
correctly,  they  imply  that  the  animal  was  looked  on, 
not  simply  as  a  filthy  and  disgusting  creature,  but  as  a 
being  endowed  with  high  supernatural  powers,  and 
that    as    such    it    was    regarded    with    that    primitive 


^  Casalis,     The    Basntos,    p.     211  ;  ^   Third    Afunial     Report     of    the 

Livingstone,    Missionary    Travels    and  Bureau  of  Ethnology  (Washington),  p. 

Researches  in   South   Africa,   p.    255  ;  225. 

John  Mackenzie,   Ten    Years  north   of  *  //'.  p.  27$. 

the  Orange  River,  p.  135  note.  ^  Turner,  Samoa,  p.  76. 

^  J.  Mackenzie,  I.e.  ^  lb.  p.  70. 


Ill  AS  A   PIG  57 

sentiment  of  religious  awe  and  fear  in  which  the 
feehngs  of  reverence  and  abhorrence  are  almost  equally 
blended.  The  ancients  themselves  seem  to  have  been 
aware  that  there  was  another  side  to  the  horror  with 
which  swine  seemed  to  inspire  the  Egyptians.  For 
the  Greek  astronomer  and  mathematician  Eudoxus, 
who  resided  fourteen  months  in  Egypt  and  con- 
versed with  the  priests/  was  of  opinion  that  the 
Egyptians  spared  the  pig,  not  out  of  abhorrence,  but 
from  a  regard  to  its  utility  in  agriculture  ;  for,  accord- 
ing to  him,  when  the  Nile  had  subsided,  herds  of  swine 
were  turned  loose  over  the  fields  to  tread  the  seed 
down  into  the  moist  earth.^  But  when  a  being  is  thus 
the  object  of  mixed  and  implicitly  contradictory  feel- 
ings, he  may  be  said  to  occupy  a  position  of  unstable 
equilibrium.  In  course  of  time  one  of  the  contradictory 
feelings  is  likely  to  prevail  over  the  other,  and  accord- 
ing as  the  feeling  which  finally  predominates  is  that  of 
reverence  or  abhorrence,  the  being  who  is  the  object 
of  it  will  rise  into  a  god  or  sink  into  a  devil.  The 
latter,  on  the  whole,  was  the  fate  of  the  pig  in  Egypt. 
For  in  historical  times  the  fear  and  horror  of  the  pig 
seem  certainly  to  have  outweighed  the  reverence  and 
worship  of  which  he  must  once  have  been  the  object, 
and  of  which,  even  in  his  fallen  state,  he  never  quite 
lost  trace.  He  came  to  be  looked  on  as  an  embodi- 
ment of  Set  or  Typhon,  the  Egyptian  devil  and  enemy 
of  Osiris.  For  it  was  in  the  shape  of  a  boar  that 
Typhon  menaced  the  eye  of  the  god  Horus,  who 
burned  him  and  instituted  the  sacrifice  of  the  pig,  the 
sun -god    Ra   having    declared   the    pig    abominable,^ 


1  Diogenes    Laertius,    Vitae  Philos,      story  is  repeated  by  Pliny,  Nat.  Hist. 
viii.  8.  xviii.   i68. 

2  Aelian,  Nat.   Aiivn.   x.  i6.     The  ^  Lefebure,  Le  niyihe  Osirien,  i.  44. 


58  OSIRIS  CHAP. 

Again,  the  story  that  Typhon  was  hunting  a  boar 
when  he  discovered  and  mangled  the  body  of  Osiris, 
and  that  this  was  the  reason  why  the  pig  was  sacrificed 
once  a  year,^  is  a  transparent  modernisation  of  an  older 
story  that  Osiris,  like  Adonis  and  Attis,  was  slain  or 
mangled  by  a  boar,  or  by  Typhon  in  the  form  of  a 
boar.  Thus,  the  annual  sacrifice  of  a  pig  to  Osiris 
might  naturally  be  interpreted  as  vengeance  inflicted 
on  the  hostile  animal  that  had  slain  or  mangled  the  god. 
But,  in  the  first  place,  when  an  animal  is  thus  killed 
as  a  solemn  sacrifice  once  and  once  only  in  the  year,  it 
generally  or  always  means  that  the  animal  is  divine — 
that  he  is  spared  and  respected  the  rest  of  the  year  as  a 
god  and  slain,  when  he  is  slain,  also  in  the  character  of 
a  god. 2  In  the  second  place,  the  examples  of  Dionysus 
and  Demeter,  if  not  of  Attis  and  Adonis,  have  taught 
us  that  the  animal  which  is  sacrificed  to  a  god  on  the 
ground  that  he  is  the  god's  enemy  may  have  been,  and 
probably  was,  originally  the  god  himself.  Therefore, 
the  fact  that  the  pig  was  sacrificed  once  a  year  to 
Osiris,  and  the  fact  that  he  appears  to  have  been  sacri- 
ficed on  the  ground  that  he  was  the  god's  enemy,  go 
to  show,  first,  that  originally  the  pig  was  a  god,  and, 
second,  that  he  was  Osiris.  At  a  later  age  the  pig 
was  distinguished  from  Osiris  when  the  latter  became 
anthropomorphic  and  his  original  relation  to  the  pig 
was  forgotten  ;  later  still,  the  pig  was  opposed  as  an 
enemy  to  Osiris  by  mythologists  who  could  think  of  no 
reason  for  killing  an  animal  in  connection  with  the 
worship  of  a  god  except  that  the  animal  was  the  god's 

1  Plutarch,  Isis  et  Osiris,  8.  Lefe-  recognised  by  Prof.  W.  Robertson 
liure  (pp.  cit.  p.  46)  recognises  that  in  Smith.  See  his  article  "  Sacrifice," 
this  story  the  boar  is  Typhon  himself.         Eucycl.     Britann.    9th    ed.    xxi.     137 

sq.      Cp.    his  Religion  of  the   Semites, 

'  This  important   principle  was  first      pp.  353  sq.,  391  sq. 


Ill  AS  A   PIG  59 

enemy ;  or,  as  Plutarch  puts  it,  not  that  which  is  dear 
to  the  gods,  but  that  which  is  the  contrary,  is  fit  to  be 
sacrificed.^  At  this  later  stage  the  havoc  which  a  wild 
boar  notoriously  makes  amongst  the  corn  would  supply 
a  plausible  reason  for  regarding  him  as  an  enemy  of 
the  corn -spirit,  though  originally,  if  I  am  right,  the 
very  fact  that  the  boar  was  found  ranging  at  will 
through  the  corn  was  the  reason  for  identifying  him 
with  the  corn -spirit,  to  whom  he  was  afterwards 
opposed  as  an  enemy.  The  view  which  identifies  the 
pig  with  Osiris  derives  not  a  little  support  from  the 
fact  that  the  day  on  which  the  pigs  were  sacrificed 
to  him  was  the  day  on  which,  according  to  tradition, 
Osiris  was  killed  ;  ^  for  thus  the  killing  of  the  pig  was 
the  annual  representation  of  the  killing  of  Osiris,  just 
as  the  throwing  of  the  pigs  into  the  caverns  at  the 
Thesmophoria  was  an  annual  representation  of  the 
descent  of  Proserpine  into  the  lower  world  ;  and  both 
customs  are  parallel  to  the  European  practice  of  killing 
a  goat,  cock,  etc.,  at  harvest  as  a  representative  of  the 
corn-spirit. 

Again,  the  view  that  the  pig,  originally  Osiris 
himself,  afterwards  came  to  be  regarded  as  an  embodi- 
ment of  his  enemy  Typhon,  is  supported  by  the  similar 
relation  of  red-haired  men  and  red  oxen  to  Typhon. 
For  in  regard  to  the  red-haired  men  who  were  burned 
and  whose  ashes  were  scattered  with  winnowing-fans, 
we  have  seen  fair  grounds  for  believing  that  originally, 
like  the  red-haired  puppies  killed  at  Rome  in  spring, 
they  were  representatives  of  the  corn -spirit  himself, 
that  is,  of  Osiris,  and  were  slain  for  the  express 
purpose    of   making    the    corn    turn    red    or    golden. 

1  Plutarch,  Isis  et  Osiris,  3 1 . 

2  Lefebure,  Le  mythe  Osirien,  p.  48  sq. 


6o  SACRED   CATTLE 


Yet  at  a  later  time  these  men  were  explained  to  be 
representatives,  not  of  Osiris,  but  of  his  enemy 
Typhon,^  and  the  killing  of  them  was  regarded  as  an 
act  of  vengeance  inflicted  on  the  enemy  of  the  god. 
Similarly,  the  red  oxen  sacrificed  by  the  Egyptians 
were  said  to  be  sacrificed  on  the  ground  of  their 
resemblance  to  Typhon  ;^  though  it  is  more  likely  that 
originally  they  were  slain  on  the  ground  of  their 
resemblance  to  the  corn-spirit  Osiris.  We  have  seen 
that  the  ox  is  a  common  representative  of  the  corn- 
spirit  and  is  slain  as  such  on  the  harvest-field. 

Osiris  was  regularly  identified  with  the  bull  Apis 
of  Memphis  and  the  bull  Mnevis  of  Heliopolis.^  But 
it  is  hard  to  say  whether  these  bulls  were  embodiments 
of  him  as  the  corn-spirit,  as  the  red  oxen  appear  to 
have  been,  or  whether  they  were  not  rather  entirely 
distinct  deities  which  got  fused  with  Osiris  by  syn- 
cretism. The  fact  that  these  two  bulls  were 
worshipped  by  all  the  Egyptians,"*  seems  to  put  them 
on  a  different  footing  from  the  ordinary  sacred  animals 
whose  cults  were  purely  local.  Hence,  if  the  latter 
were  evolved  from  totems,  as  they  probably  were, 
some  other  origin  would  have  to  be  found  for  the 
worship  of  Apis  and  Mnevis.  If  these  bulls  were  not 
originally  embodiments  of  the  corn-god  Osiris,  they 
may    possibly    be    descendants    of  the    sacred    cattle 


1  Plutarch,  his  et  Osiris,  33,  73;  Pliny,  iVa/.  ^m/.  viii.  184^(7(7. ;  Solinus, 
Diodorus,  i.  88.  xxxii.     17-21  ;    Cicero,    De   nat.   dear. 

2  Plutarch,  /sis  et  Osiris,  31  ;  Dio-  i.  29;  Aelian,  Nat.  Anim.  xi.  \Osq.', 
dorus,  i.  88.      Cp.  Plerodotus,  ii.  38.  Plutarch,    Quaest.    Conviv.   viii.    i,   3  ; 

3  ]Hutarch,  Isis  et  Osiris,  20.  id.,  I  sis  et  Osiris,  5,  35  ;  Eusebius, 
29)  33,  43  ;  Strabo,  xvii.  i,  31  ;  Ih-aepar.  Evang.  iii.  13,  l  sq.  ; 
Diodorus,  i.  21,  85  ;  Uuncker,  Pausanias,  i.  18,  4,  vii.  22,  3  sq. 
Geschiclite  des  Alterthiims,^  i.  55  sqq.  Both  Apis  and  Mnevis  were  black 
On  Apis  and  Mnevis,  see  also  bulls,  but  Apis  had  certain  white 
Herodotus,   ii.    153,   iii.    27  sq.'.    Am-  spots. 

mianus     Marcellinus,      xxii.      14,      7;  ^  Diodorus,  i.  21. 


IN  EGYPT  6i 


worshipped   by  a  pastoral   people.^     If  this   were  so, 
ancient    Egypt    would   exhibit   a  stratification   of  the 
three  great  types  of  religion  corresponding  to  the  three 
great  stages  of  society.     Totemism  or  (roughly  speak- 
ing) the  worship  of  wild  animals— the  religion  of  society 
in  the  hunting  stage— would   be   represented  by  the 
worship   of  the  local  sacred  animals  ;   the  worship  of 
cattle— the  religion  of  society  in  the  pastoral  stage- 
would  be  represented  by  the  cults  of  Apis  and  Mnevis; 
and  the  worship  of  cultivated  plants,  especially  of  corn 
—  the   religion  of  society  in  the  agricultural   stage- 
would   be  represented  by  the  worship  of  Osiris   and 
Isis.     The  Egyptian  reverence  for  cows,  which  were 
never  killed,^  might  belong  either  to  the  second  or  third 
of  these  stages.     The  fact   that  cows  were  regarded 
as  sacred  to,  that  is,  as  embodiments  of  Isis,  who  was 
represented  with  cow's  horns,  would  indicate  that  they, 
like  the  red  oxen,  were  embodiments  of  the  corn-spirit.' 
However,  this  identification  of  Isis  with  the  cow,  like 
that  of  Osiris  with  the  bulls  Apis  and    Mnevis,  may 
be    only  an  effect   of  syncretism.      But  whatever  the 
original  relation  of  Apis  to  Osiris  may  have  been,  there 
is  one  fact  about  the  former  which  ought   not  to  be 
passed  over  in  a  chapter  dealing  with  the  custom  of 
killing  the  god.    Although  the  bull  Apis  was  worshipped 
as  a  god  with  much  pomp  and  profound  reverence,  he 
was  not  suffered  to  live  beyond   a  certain  length  of 
time  which  was  prescribed  by  the  sacred  books,  and 
on   the   expiry  of  which   he  was   drowned   in   a' holy 
spring.^    The  limit,  according  to  Plutarch,  was  twenty- 

1  On  the  religious  reverence  of  pas-  2  Herodotus,  ii   41 

toral  peoples  for  their  cattle,  and  the  3  ^Xmy,     Nat.     Hist,     viii       18.  • 

possible  derivation  of  the  Apis  and  Isis-  Solinus,    xxxii.    18;    Ammian^s    Mar- 

Hathor  worship  from  the  pastoral  stage  cellinus,    xxii.    14,    7.       The  snrinP  or 

o    society    see  W.    Robertson   Smith,  well   in   which    he   was    drowneTwas 

Kehs^on  of  the  Semites,  1.  277  sqq.  perhaps  the  one  from  which  his  drink! 


62  HORSES  AND   VIRBIUS  chap. 

five  years  ;^  but  it  cannot  always  have  been  enforced, 
for  the  tombs  of  the  Apis  bulls  have  been  discovered 
in  the  present  century,  and  from  the  inscriptions  on 
them  it  appears  that  in  the  twenty-second  dynasty  two 
bulls  lived  more  than  twenty-six  years.^ 

We  are  now  in  a  position  to  hazard  a  conjecture — 
for  it  can  be  little  more — as  to  the  meaning  of  the 
tradition  that  Virbius,  the  first  of  the  divine  Kings  of 
the  Wood  at  Aricia,  was  killed  by  horses.  Having 
found,  first,  that  spirits  of  vegetation  are  not  infre- 
quently represented  in  the  form  of  horses  \''  and, 
second,  that  the  animal  which  in  later  leg^ends  is  said 
to  have  injured  the  god  was  sometimes  originally  the 
god  himself,  we  may  conjecture  that  the  horses  by 
which  Virbius  was  said  to  have  been  slain  were  really 
embodiments  of  him  as  a  deity  of  vegetation.  The 
myth  that  Virbius  had  been  killed  by  horses  was 
probably  invented  to  explain  certain  features  in  his 
cult,  amongst  others  the  custom  of  excluding  horses 
from  his  sacred  grove.  For  myth  changes  while 
custom  remains  constant ;  men  continue  to  do  what 
their  fathers  did  before  them,  though  the  reasons  on 
which  their  fathers  acted  have  been  long  forgotten. 
The  history  of  religion  is  a  long  attempt  to  reconcile 
old  custom  with  new  reason  ;  to  find  a  sound  theory 
for  an  absurd  practice.  In  the  case  before  us  we  may 
be  sure  that  the  myth  is  more  modern  than  the  custom 
and  by  no  means  represents  the  original  reason  for 
excluding  horses  from  the  grove.  From  the  fact  that 
horses  were  so  excluded  it  might  be  inferred  that  they 
could  not  be  the  sacred  animals  or  embodiments  of  the 

ing  water  was  procured  ;  he  might  not  ^  Maspero,  Histoire  ancienne,'^  ■^.  31. 

drink  the  water  of  tlie  ]\'ile.     I'lularch,  Cp.    Uuncker,    Geschichte    des    Altcr- 

Isis  et  Osiris,  5.  thums,^  i.  56. 

1   riutarcli,  Jsis  el  Osiris,  56.  ^  gee  above,  p.  24  sqq. 


Ill  HORSES  AND    VI RBI  US  63 

god  of  the  grove.  But  the  inference  would  be  rash. 
The  goat  was  at  one  time  a  sacred  animal  or  embodi- 
ment of  Athene,  as  may  be  inferred  from  the  practice 
of  representing  her  clad  in  a  goat-skin  (aegis).  Yet 
the  goat  was  neither  sacrificed  to  her  as  a  rule,  nor 
allowed  to  enter  her  great  sanctuary,  the  Acropolis  at 
Athens.  The  reason  alleged  for  this  was  that  the  goat 
injured  the  olive,  the  sacred  tree  of  Athene.^  So  far, 
therefore,  the  relation  of  the  goat  to  Athene  is  parallel 
to  the  relation  of  the  horse  to  Virbius,  both  animals 
being  excluded  from  the  sanctuary  on  the  ground  of 
injury  done  by  them  to  the  god.  But  from  Varro  we 
learn  that  there  was  an  exception  to  the  rule  which 
excluded  the  goat  from  the  Acropolis.  Once  a  year, 
he  says,  the  goat  was  driven  on  to  the  Acropolis  for  a 
necessary  sacrifice.^  Now,  as  has  been  remarked 
before,  when  an  animal  is  sacrificed  once  and  once 
only  in  the  year,  it  is  probably  slain,  not  as  a  victim 
offered  to  the  god,  but  as  a  representative  of  the  god 
himself.  Therefore  we  may  infer  that  if  a  goat  was 
sacrificed  on  the  Acropolis  once  a  year,  it  was  sacrificed 
in  the  character  of  Athene  herself;  and  it  may  be  con- 
jectured that  the  skin  of  the  sacrificed  animal  was 
placed  on  the  statue  of  the  goddess  and  formed  the 
aegis,  which  would  thus  be  renewed  annually.  Similarly 
at  Thebes  in  Egypt  rams  were  sacred  and  were  not 
sacrificed.  But  on  one  day  in  the  year  a  ram  was 
killed,  and  its  skin  was  placed  on  the  statue  of  the  god 
Ammon.3  Now,  if  we  knew  the  ritual  of  the  Arician 
grove  better,  we  might  find  the  rule  of  excluding 
horses  from  it,  like  the  rule  of  excluding  goats  from 

1  Athenaeus,    5S7   a;     Pliny,    Nat.  2  Varro,  De  agri  cti.lt.  i.  2,  19  sq. 

Hist.  viii.  204.      Cp.  Encycl.  Britann.  3  Herodotus,  ii.  42. 

9th  ed.  art.  "Sacrifice,"  xxi.  135. 


64  THE   OCTOBER  HORSE  chap. 

the  Acropolis  at  Athens,  was  subject  to  an  annual 
exception,  a  horse  being  once  a  year  taken  into  the 
grove  and  sacrificed  as  an  embodiment  of  the  god 
Virbius.  By  the  usual  misunderstanding  the  horse 
thus  killed  would  come  in  time  to  be  regarded  as  an 
enemy  offered  up  in  sacrifice  to  the  god  whom  he  had 
injured,  like  the  pig  which  was  sacrificed  to  Demeter 
and  Osiris  or  the  goat  which  was  sacrificed  to  Athene 
and  Dionysus.  It  is  so  easy  for  a  writer  to  record  a 
rule  without  noticing  an  exception  that  we  need  not 
wonder  at  finding  the  rule  of  the  Arician  grove 
recorded  without  any  mention  of  an  exception  such  as 
I  suppose.  If  we  had  had  only  the  statements  of 
Athenaeus  and  Pliny,  we  should  have  known  only  the 
rule  which  forbade  the  sacrifice  of  goats  to  Athene  and 
excluded  them  from  the  Acropolis,  without  being  aware 
of  the  important  exception  which  the  fortunate  pre- 
servation of  Varro's  work  has  revealed  to  us. 

The  conjecture  that  once  a  year  a  horse  may  have 
been  sacrificed  in  the  Arician  grove  as  a  representative 
of  the  deity  of  the  grove  derives  some  support  from  the 
fact  that  a  horse  sacrifice  of  a  similar  character  took 
place  once  a  year  at  Rome.  On  the  15th  of  October 
in  each  year  a  chariot-race  took  place  on  the  Field  of 
Mars.  The  right-hand  horse  of  the  victorious  team 
was  sacrificed  to  Mars  by  being  stabbed  with  a  spear. 
The  object  of  the  sacrifice  was  to  ensure  good  crops. 
The  animal's  head  was  cut  off  and  adorned  with  a 
string  of  loaves.  The  inhabitants  of  two  wards — the 
Sacred  Way  and  the  Subura — then  contended  with 
each  other  who  should  get  the  head.  If  the  people  of 
the  Sacred  Way  got  it,  they  fastened  it  to  a  wall  of 
the  king's  house  ;  if  the  people  of  the  Subura  got  it. 
they  fastened  it  to  the   Mamilian  tower.      The  horses 


Ill  THE   OCTOBER  HORSE  65 

tail  was  cut  off  and  carried  to  the  king's  house  with 
such  speed  that  the  blood  dripped  on  the  hearth  of  the 
house/  Further,  it  appears  that  the  blood  of  the 
horse  was  caught  and  preserved  till  the  21st  of  April, 
when  it  was  mixed  by  the  Vestal  virgins  with  the 
blood  of  the  unborn  calves  which  had  been  sacrificed 
six  days  before.  The  mixture  was  then  distributed  to 
shepherds,  and  used  by  them  for  fumigating  their 
flocks.' 

In  this  ceremony  the  decoration  of  the  horse's  head 
with  a  string  of  loaves,  and  the  alleged  object  of  the 
sacrifice,  namely,  to  procure  a  good  harvest,  clearly 
indicate  that  the  horse  was  killed  as  one  of  those 
animal  representatives  of  the  corn-spirit  of  which  we 
have  seen  so  many  examples.  The  custom  of  cutting 
off  the  horse's  tail  is  like  the  African  custom  of  cutting 
off  the  tails  of  the  oxen  and  sacrificing  them  to  obtain 
a  good  crop.2  In  both  the  Roman  and  the  African 
custom  the  animal  represents  the  corn -spirit,  and  its 
fructifying  power  is  supposed  to  reside  especially  in  its 
tail.  The  latter  idea  occurs,  as  we  have  seen,  in 
European  folk-lore.^  Again,  the  custom  of  fumigating 
the  cattle  in  spring  with  the  blood  of  the  horse  may  be 
compared  with  the  custom  of  giving  the  Maiden  as 
fodder  to  the  cattle  at  Christmas,  and  giving  the  Yule 
Boar  to  the  ploughing  oxen  or  horses  to  eat  in  spring.^ 
All  these  customs  aim  at  ensuring  the  blessing  of  the 
corn -spirit  on  the  homestead  and  its  inmates  and 
storing  it  up  for  another  year. 

The   Roman  sacrifice  of  the  October  horse,   as  it 

1  Festus,  ed.    Miiller,  pp.    178,  179,  ^  Qvid,  Fasti,  iv.  731   sqq.,  cp.  629 

220;     Plutarch,     Quaest.     Rom.     97;      sqq.;   Propertius,  v.  i,  i<^  sq. 
Polybius,   xii.    4  B.       The   sacrifice    is  ■*  Above,  p.  41  sq. 

referred  to  by  Julian,  Orat.   176  D.  *  Above,  vol.  i.  p.  40S,  vol.  ii.  p.  3. 

^  Above,  p.  30. 
VOL.   II  F 


66  THE   OCTOBER  HORSE  chap. 

was  called,  carries  us  back  to  the  early  days  when  the 
Subura,  afterwards  a  low  and  crowded  quarter  of  the 
great  metropolis,  was  still  a  separate  village,  whose 
inhabitants  engaged  in  a  friendly  contest  on  the  harvest- 
field  with  their  neighbours  of  Rome,  then  a  little  rural 
town.  The  Field  of  Mars  on  which  the  ceremony  took 
place  lay  beside  the  Tiber,  and  formed  part  of  the  king's 
domain  down  to  the  abolition  of  the  monarchy.  For 
tradition  ran  that  at  the  time  when  the  last  of  the 
kings  was  driven  from  Rome,  the  corn  stood  ripe  for 
the  sickle  on  the  crown  lands  beside  the  river ;  but  no 
one  would  eat  the  accursed  grain  and  it  was  flung  into 
the  river  in  such  heaps  that,  the  water  being  low  with 
the  summer  heat,  it  formed  the  nucleus  of  an  island.^ 
The  horse  sacrifice  was  thus  an  old  autumn  custom 
observed  upon  the  king's  corn-fields  at  the  end  of  the 
harvest.  The  tail  and  blood  of  the  horse,  as  the  chief 
parts  of  the  corn-spirit's  representative,  were  taken  to 
the  king's  house  and  kept  there  ;  just  as  in  Germany 
the  harvest -cock  is  nailed  on  the  gable  or  over  the 
door  of  the  farmhouse  ;  and  as  the  last  sheaf,  in  the 
form  of  the  Maiden,  is  carried  home  and  kept  over  the 
fireplace  in  the  Highlands  of  Scotland.  Thus  the 
blessing  of  the  corn-spirit  was  brought  to  the  king's 
house  and  hearth  and,  through  them,  to  the  community 
of  which  he  was  the  head.  Similarly  in  the  spring 
and  autumn  customs  of  Northern  Europe  the  May- 
pole is  sometimes  set  up  in  front  of  the  house  of 
the  mayor  or  burgomaster,  and  the  last  sheaf  at 
harvest  is  brought  to  him  as  the  head  of  the  village. 
But  while  the  tail  and  blood  fell  to  the  king,  the 
neighbouring  village  of  the  Subura,  which  no  doubt 
once  had  a  similar  ceremony  of  its  own,  was  gratified 

1  Livy,  ii.  5. 


Ill  THE   OCTOBER  HORSE  67 

by  being  allowed  to  compete  for  the  prize  of  the 
horse's  head.  The  Mamilian  tower  to  which  the 
Suburans  nailed  the  horse's  head  when  they  succeeded 
in  carrying  it  off,  appears  to  have  been  a  peel-tower  or 
keep  of  the  old  Mamilian  family,  the  magnates  of  the 
village.^  The  ceremony  thus  performed  on  the  king's 
fields  and  at  his  house  on  behalf  of  the  whole  town 
and  of  the  neighbouring  village  presupposes  a  time 
when  each  commune  performed  a  similar  ceremony  On 
its  own  fields.  In  the  rural  districts  of  Latium  the 
villages  may  have  continued  to  observe  the  custom, 
each  on  its  own  land,  long  after  the  Roman  hamlets 
had  merged  their  separate  harvest  -  homes  in  the 
common  celebration  on  the  king's  lands.^  There  is 
no  intrinsic  improbability  in  the  supposition  that  the 
sacred  grove  of  Aricia,  like  the  Field  of  Mars  at  Rome, 
may  have  been  the  scene  of  a  common  harvest  celebra- 
tion, at  which  a  horse  was  sacrificed  with  the  same  rude 
rites  on  behalf  of  the  neighbouring  villages.  The 
horse  would  represent  the  fructifying  spirit  both  of  the 
tree  and  of  the  corn,  for  the  two  ideas  melt  into  each 
other,  as  we  see  in  customs  like  the  Harvest-May. 


§  1 1. — Eating  the  god 

We  have  now  seen  that  the  corn  -  spirit  is  re- 
presented sometimes  in  human,  sometimes  in  animal 
form,  and  that  in  both  cases  he  is  killed  in  the  person 
of  his  representative  and  eaten  sacramentally.  To  find 
examples  of  actually  killing  the  human  representative 
of  the  corn -spirit  we  had  of  course  to  go  to  savage 

1  Festus,     ed.     Miiller,     pp.      130,      of  an  essay  by  Mannhardt  {Mytholog. 
131.  Forsch.    pp.    156-201),    of  which    the 

^  The  October  horse  is  the  subject      above  account  is  a  summary. 


68  SACRAMENTAL  EATING  chap. 

races  ;  but  the  harvest  suppers  of  our  European 
peasants  have  furnished  unmistakable  examples  of  the 
sacramental  eating  of  animals  as  representatives  of  the 
corn-spirit.  But  further,  as  might  have  been  antici- 
pated, the  new  corn  is  itself  eaten  sacramentally,  that 
is,  as  the  body  of  the  corn-spirit.  In  Wermland, 
Sweden,  the  farmer's  wife  uses  the  grain  of  the  last 
sheaf  to  bake  a  loaf  in  the  shape  of  a  little  girl ;  this 
loaf  is  divided  amongst  the  whole  household  and  eaten 
by  them.^  Here  the  loaf  represents  the  corn -spirit 
conceived  as  a  maiden  ;  just  as  in  Scotland  the  corn- 
spirit  is  similarly  conceived  and  represented  by  the 
last  sheaf  made  up  in  the  form  of  a  woman  and  bearing 
the  name  of  the  Maiden.  As  usual,  the  corn-spirit 
is  believed  to  reside  in  the  last  sheaf;  and  to  eat  a 
loaf  made  from  the  last  sheaf  is,  therefore,  to  eat  the 
corn-spirit  itself  Similarly  at  La  Palisse  in  France  a 
man  made  of  dough  is  hung  upon  the  fir-tree  which  is 
carried  on  the  last  harvest-waggon.  The  tree  and  the 
dough-man  are  taken  to  the  mayor's  house  and  kept 
there  till  the  vintage  is  over.  Then  the  close  of  the 
harvest  is  celebrated  by  a  feast  at  which  the  mayor 
bre'aks  the  dough-man  in  pieces  and  gives  the  pieces  to 
the  people  to  eat.- 

In  these  examples  the  corn-spirit  is  represented 
and  eaten  in  human  shape.  In  other  cases,  though 
the  new  corn  is  not  baked  in  loaves  of  human 
shape,  still  the  solemn  ceremonies  with  which  it  is 
eaten  suffice  to  indicate  that  it  is  partaken  of  sacra- 
mentally, that  is,  as  the  body  of  the  corn-spirit. 
For   example,   the   following  ceremonies   used    to   be 


1  M.  F.  p.  179.  the   dough -man   is  made   of  the  new 

corn ;    but   probably  this  is,    or  once 
-  B.  K.  p.  205.      It  is  not  said  that      was,  the  case. 


OF  NEW  CROPS  69 


observed  by  Lithuanian  peasants  at  eating  the  new 
corn.  When  the  harvest  and  the  sowing  of  the  new 
corn  were  over,  each  farmer  held  a  festival  called 
Sabarios,  that  is,  "the  mixing  or  throwing  together." 
He  took  a  handful  of  each  kind  of  grain — wheat, 
barley,  oats,  flax,  beans,  lentils,  etc.  ;  and  each  handful 
he  divided  into  three  parts.  The  twenty -seven 
portions  of  each  grain  were  then  thrown  on  a  heap  and 
all  mixed  up  together.  The  grain  used  had  to  be  the 
grain  which  was  first  threshed  and  winnowed  and 
which  had  been  set  aside  and  kept  for  this  purpose. 
A  part  of  the  grain  thus  mixed  was  used  to  bake  little 
loaves,  one  for  each  of  the  household  ;  the  rest  was 
mixed  with  more  barley  or  oats  and  made  into  beer. 
The  first  beer  brewed  from  this  mixture  was  for  the 
drinking  of  the  farmer,  his  wife,  and  children ;  the 
second  brew  was  for  the  servants.  The  beer  being 
ready,  the  farmer  chose  an  evening  when  no  stranger 
was  expected.  Then  he  knelt  down  before  the  barrel 
of  beer,  drew  a  jugful  of  the  liquor  and  poured  it  on 
the  bung  of  the  barrel,  saying,  "  O  fruitful  earth,  make 
rye  and  barley  and  all  kinds  of  corn  to  flourish."  Next 
he  took  the  jug  to  the  parlour,  where  his  wife  and  child- 
ren awaited  him.  On  the  floor  of  the  parlour  lay  bound 
a  black  or  white  or  speckled  (not  a  red)  cock  and  a  hen 
of  the  same  colour  and  of  the  same  brood,  which  must 
have  been  hatched  within  the  year.  Then  the  farmer 
knelt  down,  with  the  jug  in  his  hand,  and  thanked 
God  for  the  harvest  and  prayed  for  a  good  crop  next 
year.  Then  all  lifted  up  their  hands  and  said,  "  O 
God,  and  thou,  O  earth,  we  give  you  this  cock  and 
hen  as  a  free-will  offering."  With  that  the  farmer 
killed  the  fowls  with  the  blows  of  a  wooden  spoon,  for 
he  might  not  cut  their  heads  oft.     After  the  first  prayer 


70  SACRAMENTAL   EATING  chap. 

and  after  killing  each  of  the  birds  he  poured  out 
a  third  of  the  beer.  Then  his  wife  boiled  the  fowls 
in  a  new  pot  which  had  never  been  used  before.  A 
bushel  was  then  set,  bottom  upwards,  on  the  floor,  and 
on  it  were  placed  the  little  loaves  mentioned  above 
and  the  boiled  fowls.  Next  the  new  beer  was  fetched, 
together  with  a  ladle  and  three  mugs,  none  of  which 
was  used  except  on  this  occasion.  When  the  farmer 
had  ladled  the  beer  into  the  mugs,  the  family  knelt 
down  round  the  bushel.  The  father  then  uttered  a 
prayer  and  drank  off  the  three  mugs  of  beer.  The 
rest  follo'wed  his  example.  Then  the  loaves  and  the 
flesh  of  the  fowls  were  eaten,  after  which  the  beer 
went  round  again,  till  every  one  had  emptied  each  of 
the  three  mugs  nine  times.  None  of  the  food  should 
remain  over ;  but  if  anything  did  happen  to  be  left, 
it  was  consumed  next  morninof  with  the  same  cere- 
monies.  The  bones  were  then  given  to  the  dog  to 
eat ;  if  he  did  not  eat  them  all  up,  the  remains  were 
buried  under  the  dung  in  the  cattle  -  stall.  This 
ceremony  was  observed  at  the  beginning  of  December. 
On  the  day  on  which  it  occurred  no  bad  word  might 
be  spoken.^ 

Such  was  the  custom  about  two  hundred  years 
ago.  At  the  present  day  in  Lithuania,  when  new  po- 
tatoes or  loaves  made  from  the  new  corn  are  being 
eaten,  all  the  people  at  table  pull  each  other's  hair.- 
The  meaning  of  the  latter  custom  is  obscure,  but  a 
similar  custom  was  certainly  observed  by  the  heathen 
Lithuanians  at  their  solemn  sacrifices.^  Many  of  the 
Esthonians  of  the  island  of  Oesel  will  not  eat  bread 


1  Praetorius,  Deliciae  Prussicae,  pp.      ett  (Gottingen,  1882),  p.  89. 

60-64  ;  A.   IV.  F.  p.  249  sqq.  ^  Simon  Giunau,  PrcussiscJic  Chron- 

2  'BezztnhcxgQY,LJiatiischeForsc/nt)ig-      ik,  ed.  Perlbach,  i.  91. 


OF  NEW  CROPS  71 


baked  of  the  new  corn  till  they  have  first  taken  a 
bite  at  a  piece  of  iron.^  The  iron  is  here  plainly  a 
charm,  intended  to  render  harmless  the  spirit  that  is  in 
the  corn.'  In  Sutherlandshire  at  the  present  day, 
when  the  new  potatoes  are  dug  all  the  family  must 
taste  them,  otherwise  "  the  spirits  in  them  [the 
potatoes]  take  offence,  and  the  potatoes  would  not 
keep."^  In  one  part  of  Yorkshire  it  is  still  the 
custom  for  the  clergyman  to  cut  the  first  corn  ;  and 
my  informant  believes  that  the  corn  so  cut  is  used 
to  make  the  communion  bread.-^  If  the  latter  part 
of  the  custom  is  correctly  reported  (and  analogy  is 
all  in  its  favour),  it  shows  how  the  Christian  com- 
munion has  absorbed  within  itself  a  sacrament  which 
is  doubtless  far  older  than  Christianity. 

At  the  close  of  the  rice  harvest  in  Boeroe,  East 
Indies,  each  clan  (fenna)  meets  at  a  common  sacra- 
mental meal,  to  which  every  member  of  the  clan  is 
bound  to  contribute  a  little  of  the  new  rice.  This  meal 
is  called  "eating  the  soul  of  the  rice,"  a  name  which 
clearly  indicates  the  sacramental  character  of  the 
repast.  Some  of  the  rice  is  also  set  apart  and 
offered  to  the  spirits.^  Amongst  the  Alfoers  of 
Celebes  the  priest  sows  the  first  rice- seed  and  plucks 
the  first  ripe  rice  in  each  field.  This  rice  he  roasts 
and  grinds  into  meal,  and  gives  some  of  it  to  each 
of  the  household.*^  Shortly  before  the  rice  harvest 
in   Bolang  Mongondo,    Celebes,  an  offering  is  made 

1  Holzmayer,  Osiliaiia,  p.  108.  ^  G.    A.    Wilken,    Bijdrage   tot    de 

o  r\     ■  -u  -^^f  ^,.,-,.;t^  kennis    der   Alfoeren    van    het    eiland 

^  On  iron  as  a  charm  aramst  spuits,  „  ^  J 

,  1    •         ,»,  Boeroe,  p.  20. 

see  above,  vol.  1.  p.  175  so.  „  ^'  jFI    ^,^.,,         ,.■o■■^  *  j.    i 

'  ..  •'  P.  N.  Wilken,  "  Bijdragen  tot  de 

3  Folk-lore  Journal,  vii.  54.  kennis  van  de  zeden  en  gewoonten  der 

*  Communicated  by  the  Rev.  J.J.  C.  Alfoeren  in   de  Minahassa,"  in  Mede- 

Yarborough,  of  Chislehurst,  Kent.    See  deelingen   van   ivege   het  Nederlandsche 

Folk-lore  Journal,  vii.  50.  Zendelitiggenootschap,\\\.  {12,6-^) -p.  12"]. 


72  SACRAMENTAL  EATING  chap. 

of  a  small  pig  or  a  fowl.  Then  the  priest  plucks 
a  little  rice,  first  on  his  own  field  and  then  on  those 
of  his  neighbours.  All  the  rice  thus  plucked  by  him 
he  dries  along  with  his  own,  and  then  gives  it  back 
to  the  respective  owners,  who  have  it  ground  and 
boiled.  When,  it  is  boiled  the  women  take  it  back, 
with  an  ^^"g,  to  the  priest,  who  offers  the  ^gg  in 
sacrifice  and  returns  the  rice  to  the  women.  Of 
this  rice  every  member  of  the  family,  down  to  the 
youngest  child,  must  partake.  After  this  ceremony 
every  one  is  free  to  get  in  his  rice.^  Amongst  the 
Burghers,  a  tribe  of  the  Neilgherry  Hills  in  Southern 
India,  the  first  handful  of  seed  is  sown  and  the  first 
sheaf  reaped  by  a  Curumbar — a  man  of  a  different 
tribe,  whom  the  Burghers  regard  as  sorcerers.  The 
grain  contained  in  the  first  sheaf  "is  that  day  reduced 
to  meal,  made  into  cakes,  and,  being  offered  as  a 
first- fruit  oblation,  is,  together  with  the  remainder  of 
the  sacrificed  animal,  partaken  of  by  the  Burgher 
and  the  whole  of  his  family  as  the  meat  of  a  federal 
offering  and  sacrifice."- 

Amoncrst  the  Coorafs  of  Southern  India  the  man 
who  is  to  cut  the  first  sheaf  of  rice  at  harvest  is 
chosen  by  an  astrologer.  At  sunset  the  whole  house- 
hold takes  a  hot  bath  and  then  goes  to  the  rice- 
field,  where  the  chosen  reaper  cuts  an  armful  of 
rice  with  a  new  sickle,  and  distributes  two  or  more 
stalks  to  all  present.  Then  all  return  to  the  thresh- 
ing-floor. A  bundle  of  leaves  is  adorned  with  a 
stalk  of  rice  and  fastened  to  the  post  in  the  centre 
of    the   threshing-floor.       Enough    of    the    new    rice 

1  N.  P.  Wilken  en  J.   A.    Schwarz,  ^  j-j_     Harkness,    Description    of    a 

"  Allerlei    over    het   land   en   volk  van  Singular  Ahorigiiial    Race    ijihabiting 

Bolaang  Mongondou,"  in  Mededeel.  v.  the  Summit  of  the  Neilgherry  Hills,  p. 

w.  h.  Nederl.  Zendelinggen.  xi.  369  sq.  56  sq. 


OF  NEW  CROPS 


is  now  threshed,  cleaned,  and  ground  to  provide 
flour  for  the  dough  cakes  which  each  member  of 
the  household  is  to  eat.  Then  they  go  to  the  door 
of  the  house,  where  the  mistress  washes  the  feet 
of  the  sheaf- cutter,  and  presents  to  him,  and  after 
him  to  all  the  rest,  a  brass  vessel  full  of  milk, 
honey,  and  sugar,  from  which  each  person  takes 
a  draught.  Then  the  man  who  cut  the  sheaf 
kneads  a  cake  of  rice  meal,  plantains,  milk,  honey, 
seven  new  rice  corns,  seven  pieces  of  cocoa-nut, 
etc.  Every  one  receives  a  little  of  this  cake  on 
an  Ashvatha  leaf,  and  eats  it.  The  ceremony  is 
then  over  and  the  sheaf-cutter  mixes  with  the 
company.  When  he  was  engaged  in  cutting  the 
rice  no  one  might  touch  him.^  Among  the  Hindoos 
of  Southern  India  the  eating  of  the  new  rice  is  the 
occasion  of  a  family  festival  called  Pongol.  The  new 
rice  is  boiled  in  a  new  pot  on  a  fire  which  is  kindled 
at  noon  on  the  day  when,  according  to  Hindoo 
astrologers,  the  sun  enters  the  tropic  of  Capricorn. 
The  boiling  of  the  pot  is  watched  with  great  anxiety 
by  the  whole  family,  for  as  the  milk  boils,  so  will  the 
coming  year  be.  If  the  milk  boils  rapidly,  the  year 
will  be  prosperous  ;  but  it  will  be  the  reverse  if  the 
milk  boils  slowly.  Some  of  the  new  boiled  rice  is 
offered  to  the  image  of  Ganesa ;  then  every  one 
partakes  of  it.-  At  Gilgit,  in  the  Hindoo  Koosh, 
before  wheat -harvest  begins,  a  member  of  every 
household  gathers  a  handful  of  ears  of  corn  secretly  at 
dusk.  A  few  of  the  ears  are  hung  up  over  the  door 
of  the  house,  and  the  rest  are  roasted  next  morning, 


^  Cover,     Folk-songs    of   Southern  ^  Cover,   "The  Pongol   Festival   in 

India,  p.    105  sqq.;  Folk-lore  Journal,       Southern     India,"  Journ.    R.    Asiatic 
vii.  302  sqq.  Society,  N.  S.  v.  (1S7 1)  p.  91  sqq. 


.74  SACRAMENTAL  EATING 


and   eaten    steeped    in    milk.       The   day   is    spent    in 
rejoicings,  and  next  morning  the  harvest  begins.^ 

The  ceremony  of  eating  the  new  yams  at  Onitsha, 
on  the  Quorra  River,  Guinea,  is  thus  described  : 
"  Each  headman  brought  out  six  yams,  and  cut 
down  young  branches  of  pahii- leaves  and  placed 
them  before  his  gate,  roasted  three  of  the  yams, 
and  got  some  kola- nuts  and  fish.  After  the  yam 
is  roasted,  the  Libia,  or  country  doctor,  takes  the 
yam,  scrapes  it  with  a  sort  of  meal,  and  divides 
it  into  halves  ;  he  then  takes  one  piece,  and  places 
it  on  the  lips  of  the  person  who  is  going  to  eat 
the  new  yam.  The  eater  then  blows  up  the  steam 
from  the  hot  yam,  and  afterwards  pokes  the  whole 
into  his  mouth,  and  says,  '  I  thank  God  for  being 
permitted  to  eat  the  new  yam  ; '  he  then  begins 
to  chew  it  heartily,  with  fish  likewise."'-^  Amongst 
the  Kafirs  of  Natal  and  Zululand,  no  one  may 
eat  of  the  new  fruits  till  after  a  festival  which 
marks  the  beginning  of  the  Kafir  year.  All  the 
people  assemble  at  the  king's  kraal,  where  they 
feast  and  dance.  Before  they  separate  the  "  dedi- 
cation of  the  people "  takes  place.  Various  fruits 
of  the  earth,  as  corn,  mealies,  and  pumpkins,  mixed 
with  the  flesh  of  a  sacrificed  animal  and  with 
"medicine,"  are  boiled  in  great  pots,  and  a  little 
of  this  food  is  placed  in  each  man's  mouth  by  the 
king  himself.  After  thus  partaking  of  the  sanctified 
fruits,  a  man  is  himself  sanctified  for  the  whole  year, 
and  may  immediately  get  in  his  crops.''' 

1  Biddulph,     Tribes    of   the    Hindoo  West  AfHcan  Countries  and  Peoples,  \yy 

Koosh,^.  103.  J.  AfiicanusB.  Horton(London,  1S6S), 

-  Crowther  and  Taylor,    The  Gospel  p.  180  sq. 
on  the  Banks  of  the  Niger,  p.  287  sq.  3  Speckmann,  Die  Hennannshurger 

Mr.  Taylor's  information  is  repeated  in  Mission  in  Afrika,  p.  150  sq.      On  the 


OF  NEW  CROPS  75 


Amongst  the  Creek  Indians  of  North  America,  the 
bicsk  or  festival  of  first-fruits  was  the  chief  ceremony 
of  the  year/  It  was  held  in  July  or  August,  when 
the  corn  was  ripe,  and  marked  the  end  of  the  old 
year  and  the  beginning  of  the  new  one.  Before  it 
took  place  none  of  the  Indians  would  eat  or  even 
handle  any  part  of  the  new  harvest.  Sometimes 
each  town  had  its  own  busk ;  sometimes  several 
towns  united  to  hold  one  in  common.  Before  cele- 
brating the  busk,  the  people  provided  themselves 
with  new  clothes  and  new  household  utensils  and  fur- 
niture ;  they  collected  their  old  clothes  and  rubbish, 
together  with  all  the  remaining  grain  and  other  old 
provisions,  cast  them  together  in  one  common  heap, 
and  consumed  them  with  fire.'  As  a  preparation  for 
the  ceremony,  all  the  fires  in  the  village  were  extin- 
guished, and  the  ashes  swept  clean  away.  In  particular, 
the  hearth  or  altar  of  the  temple  was  dug  up  and  the 

Zulu  feast  of  first-fruits,  see  also  N.  Amet-katt  Indians  (London,  1775),  pp. 

Isaacs,     Travels    and    Adventures    in  96-111;  W.  Bartram,  Travels  throngh 

Eastern  Africa,  ii.  291  sq.;  Arbousset  North    and  South    Carolina,    Georgia, 

et  Daumas,    Voyage  d' exploration,  etc.  East  and  West  Flo7-idaiX-'^"'^^'^^-:'^19'^)-> 

p.  308  sq. ;  Callaway,  Religious  System  p.  507  sq. ;  B.  Hawkins,  "  Sketch  of  the 

of  the  Amazulu,   p.    389   note ;  South  Creek    country,"   in    Collections  of  the 

Af-ican  Folk-lore  Journal,  i.   135  sqq.;  Georgia  Historical  Society, \\\.{^2iV2i\\vvz!n, 

Yxiisch,  Die  EingeborenenSiid-Afrikas,  1848),  pp.  75-78;  A.  A.   M'Gillivray, 

p.    143;    Lewis    Grout,    Zulitland,    p.  in   Schoolcraft's  Indian   Tribes,  v.  267 

160  sqq.    From  Mr.  Grout's  description  sq.     Adair's   description  is  the  fullest 

it  appears  that  a  bull  is  killed  and  its  and   has   been   chiefly  followed  in  the 

gall   drunk   by   the    king   and    people.  text.      In  Obsen'ations  on  the  Creek  and 

In  killing  it  the  men  must  use  nothing  Cherokee  Indians,  by  William  Bartram 

but   their  naked  hands.      The  flesh  of  (1789),     with    prefatory    and    supple- 

the  bull   is  given   to   the   boys  to  eat  me/itary   notes,   by   E.    G.    Squier,    p. 

what  they  like  and  burn  the  rest;  the  75,    there  is  a    description — extracted 

men  may  not  taste  it.     As  a  final  cere-  from  an  MS.   of  J.   H.    Payne  (author 

mony  the  king  breaks  a  green  calabash  of  Home,  Szveet  Ilome) — of  the  similar 

in    presence   of  the   people,    "thereby  ceremony  observed  by  the  Cherokees. 

signifying  that  he  opens  the  new  year,  I    possess    a    copy    of    this    work    in 

and  grants  the   people   leave*  to  eat  of  pamphlet   form,    but  it   appears  to   be 

the    fruits    of  the   season."     If  a  man  an    extract    from    the    transactions    or 

eats  the  new  fruits  before  the  festival,  proceedings  of  a  society,   probably  an 

he  will  die  or  is  actually  put  to  death.  American   one.      Mr.    Squier's    preface 

1  The   ceremony  is   described   inde-  is  dated  New  York,  1851. 

•ptndiQnily  hy  ]^m&s  KAaXv,  Histoiy  of  the  -  W.  Bartram,  Travels,  p.  507. 


76  SACRAMENTAL  EATING  chap. 

ashes  carried  out.  Then  the  chief  priest  put  some 
roots  of  the  button-snake  plant,  with  some  green  tobacco 
leaves  and  a  little  of  the  new  fruits,  at  the  bottom  of 
the  fireplace,  which  he  afterwards  ordered  to  be  covered 
up  with  white  clay,  and  wetted  over  with  clean  water. 
A  thick  arbour  of  green  branches  of  young  trees  was 
then  made  over  the  altar.^  Meanwhile  the  women  at 
home  were  cleaning  out  their  houses,  renewing  the  old 
hearths,  and  scouring  all  the  cooking  vessels  that  they 
might  be  ready  to  receive  the  new  fire  and  the  new 
fruits.^  The  public  or  sacred  square  was  carefully 
swept  of  even  the  smallest  crumbs  of  previous  feasts, 
*' for  fear  of  polluting  the  first-fruit  offerings."  Also 
every  vessel  that  had  contained  or  had  been  used  about 
any  food  during  the  expiring  year  was  removed  from 
the  temple  before  sunset.  Then  all  the  men  who  were 
not  known  to  have  violated  the  law  of  the  first-fruit 
offering  and  that  of  marriage  during  the  year  were 
summoned  by  a  crier  to  enter  the  holy  square  and 
observe  a  solemn  fast.  But  the  women  (except  six 
old  ones),  the  children,  and  all  who  had  not  attained 
the  rank  of  warriors  were  forbidden  to  enter  the 
square.  Sentinels  were  also  posted  at  the  corners  of 
the  square  to  keep  out  all  persons  deemed  impure  and 
all  animals.  A  strict  fast  was  then  observed  for  two 
nights  and  a  day,  the  devotees  drinking  a  bitter  decoc- 
tion of  button-snake  root  "  in  order  to  vomit  and  purge 
their  sinful  bodies."  That  the  people  outside  the  square 
might  also  be  purified,  one  of  the  old  men  laid  down  a 


1  So  amongst  the  Cherokees,  accord-  sacred  scfiiare.      Every  man  then  pro- 

ing  to  J.  n.  Tayne,  an  arljour  of  green  vided  himself  with  a  green  bough." 

boughs  was  made  in  the  sacred  square ;  ^  So  Adair.      Bartram,  on  the  other 

then  "aljeautiful  bushy-topped  shade-  hand,  as  we  have  seen,   says  that  the 

tree  was  cut  down  close  to  the  roots,  old  vessels  were  burned  and  new  ones 

and  planted  in  the  very  centre  of  the  prepared  for  the  festival. 


OF  NEW  CROPS  77 


quantity  of  green  tobacco  at  a  corner  of  the  square  ; 
this  was  carried  off  by  an  old  woman  and  distributed 
to  the  people  without,  who  chewed  and  swallowed  it 
"  in  order  to  afflict  their  souls."  During  this  general 
fast,  the  women,  children,  and  men  of  weak  constitution 
were  allowed  to  eat  after  mid-day,  but  not  before.  On 
the  morning  when  the  fast  ended,  the  women  brought 
a  quantity  of  the  old  year's  food  to  the  outside  of  the 
sacred  square.  These  provisions  were  then  brought 
in  and  set  before  the  famished  multitude,  but  all  traces 
of  them  had  to  be  removed  before  noon.  When  the 
sun  was  declining  from  the  meridian,  all  the  people 
were  commanded  by  the  voice  of  a  crier  to  stay  within 
doors,  to  do  no  bad  act,  and  to  be  sure  to  extinguish 
and  throw  away  every  spark  of  the  old  fire.  Universal 
silence  now  reigned.  Then  the  high  priest  made  the 
new  fire  by  the  friction  of  two  pieces  of  wood,  and 
placed  it  on  the  altar  under  the  green  arbour.  This 
new  fire  was  believed  to  atone  for  all  past  crimes 
except  murder.  Then  a  basket  of  new  fruits  was 
brought  ;  the  high  priest  took  out  a  little  of  each  sort 
of  fruit,  rubbed  it  with  bear's  oil,  and  offered  it,  together 
with  some  flesh,  "  to  the  bountiful  holy  spirit  of  fire, 
as  a  first-fruit  offering,  and  an  annual  oblation  for  sin." 
He  also  consecrated  the  sacred  emetics  (the  button- 
snake  root  and  the  cassina  or  black-drink)  by  pouring 
a  little  of  them  into  the  fire.  The  persons  who  had 
remained  outside  now  approached,  without  entering, 
the  sacred  square  ;  and  the  chief  priest  thereupon  made 
a  speech,  exhorting  the  people  to  observe  their  old 
rites  and  customs,  announcing  that  the  new  divine  fire 
had  purged  away  the  sins  of  the  past  year,  and  ear- 
nestly warning  the  women  that,  if  any  of  them  had  not 
extinguished  the  old  fire,  or  had  contracted  any  im- 


78  SACRAMENTS 


purity,  they  must  forthwith  depart,  "lest  the  divine  fire 
should  spoil  both  them  and  the  people."  Some  of  the 
new  fire  was  then  laid  down  outside  the  holy  square  ; 
the  women  carried  it  home  joyfully,  and  laid  it  on  their 
unpolluted  hearths.  When  several  towns  had  united 
to  celebrate  the  festival,  the  new  fire  might  thus  be 
carried  for  several  miles.  The  new  fruits  were  then 
dressed  on  the  new  fires  and  eaten  with  bear's  oil, 
which  was  deemed  indispensable.  At  one  point  of  the 
festival  the  men  rubbed  the  new  corn  between  their 
hands,  then  on  their  faces  and  breasts.^  During 
the  festival  which  followed,  the  warriors,  dressed  in 
their  wild  martial  array,  their  heads  covered  with 
white  down  and  carrying  white  feathers  in  their  hands, 
danced  round  the  sacred  arbour,  under  which  burned 
the  new  fire.  The  ceremonies  lasted  eight  days,  dur- 
ing which  the  strictest  continence  was  practised.  To- 
wards the  conclusion  of  the  festival  the  warriors  fought 
a  mock  battle ;  then  the  men  and  women  together,  in 
three  circles,  danced  round  the  sacred  fire.  Lastly,  all 
the  people  smeared  themselves  with  white  clay  and 
bathed  in  running  water.  They  came  out  of  the  water 
"  believing  themselves  out  of  the  reach  of  temporal 
evil  for  their  past  vicious  conduct."  So  they  departed 
in  joy  and  peace. 

The  solemn  preparations  thus  made  for  eating  the 
new  corn  prove  that  it  was  eaten  as  a  sacrament.  In 
the  Boeroe  and  Creek  customs,  this  sacrament  is  com- 
bined with  a  sacrifice,  and  in  course  of  time  the  sacri- 
fice of  first-fruits  tends  to  throw  the  sacrament  into 
the  shade,  if  not  to  supersede  it.  The  mere  fact  of 
having  offered  the  first-fruits  to  the  gods  or  ancestral 
spirits  comes  now  to  be  thought  a  sufficient  prepara- 

1  U.  Hawkins,  "Sketch,"  etc.,  p.  76. 


Ill  IN  ANCIENT  MEXICO  79 

tion  for  eating  the  new  corn  ;  the  gods  having  received 
their  share,  man  is  free  to  enjoy  the  rest.  This 
mode  of  viewing  the  new  fruits  impHes  that  they  are 
regarded  no  longer  as  themselves  instinct  with  divine 
life,  but  merely  as  a  gift  bestowed  by  the  gods  upon 
man,  who  is  bound  to  express  his  gratitude  and  hom- 
age to  his  divine  benefactors  by  presenting  them  with 
a  portion  of  the  fruits  of  the  earth.  But  with  sacrifice, 
as  distinct  from  sacrament,  we  are  not  here  concerned.^ 
The  custom  of  eating  bread  sacramentally  as  the 
body  of  a  god  was  practised  by  the  Aztecs  before  the 
discovery  and  conquest  of  Mexico  by  the  Spaniards. 
Twice  a  year,  in  May  and  December,  an  image  of  the 
great  Mexican  god  Huitzilopochtli  or  Vitzilipuztli  was 
made  of  dough,  then  broken  in  pieces,  and  solemnly 
eaten  by  his  worshippers.  The  May  ceremony  is  thus 
described  by  the  historian  Acosta.  "  Two  dales  before 
this  feast,  the  virgins  whereof  I  have  spoken  (the 
which  were  shut  up  and  secluded  in  the  same  temple 
and  were  as  it  were  religious  women)  did  mingle  a 
quantitie  of  the  seede  of  beetes  with  roasted  Mays 
[maize],  and  then  they  did  mould  it  with  honie,  making 
an  idol  of  that  paste  in  bignesse  like  to  that  of  wood, 
putting  insteede  of  eyes  graines  of  greene  glasse,  of 
blue  or  white ;  and  for  teeth  graines  of  Mays  set 
forth  with  all  the  ornament  and  furniture  that  I  have 
said.  This  being  finished,  all  the  Noblemen  came  and 
brought  it  an  exquisite  and  rich  garment,  like  unto  that 
of  the  idol,  wherewith  they  did  attyre  it.  Being  thus 
clad  and  deckt,  they  did  set  it  in  an  azured  chaire  and 
in  a  litter  to  carry  it  on  their  shoulders.  The  morning 
of  this  feast  being  come,  an  houre  before  day  all  the 
maidens  came  forth  attired  in  white,  with  new  orna- 

1  See  Note  on  "  Offerings  of  first-fruits  "  at  the  end  of  the  volume. 


So  MEXICAN  SACRAMENTS  chap. 

ments,  the  which  that  day  were  called  the  Sisters  of 
their  god  Vitzilipuztli,  they  came  crowned  with  garlands 
of  Mays  rosted  and  parched,  being  like  unto  azahar 
or  the  flower  of  orange  ;  and  about  their  neckes  they 
had  great  chaines  of  the  same,  which  went  bauldricke- 
wise  under  their  left  arme.  Their  cheekes  were  died 
with  Vermillion,  their  armes  from  the  elbow  to  the 
wrist  were  covered  with  red  parrots'  feathers."  Young 
men,  crowned  like  the  virgins  with  maize,  then  carried 
the  idol  in  its  litter  to  the  foot  of  the  great  pyramid- 
shaped  temple,  up  the  steep  and  narrow  steps  of  which 
it  was  drawn  to  the  music  of  flutes,  trumpets,  cornets, 
and  drums.  "While  they  mounted  up  the  idoll  all  the 
people  stoode  in  the  Court  with  much  reverence  and 
feare.  Being  mounted  to  the  top,  and  that  they  had 
placed  it  in  a  little  lodge  of  roses  which  they  held 
readie,  presently  came  the  yong  men,  which  strawed 
many  flowers  of  sundrie  kindes,  wherewith  they  filled 
the  temple  both  within  and  without.  This  done,  all 
the  virgins  came  out  of  their  convent,  bringing  peeces 
of  paste  compounded  of  beetes  and  rosted  Mays,  which 
was  of  the  same  paste  whereof  their  idol  was  made 
and  compounded,  and  they  were  of  the  fashion  of  great 
bones.  They  delivered  them  to  the  yong  men,  who 
carried  them  up  and  laide  them  at  the  idoll's  feete, 
wherewith  they  filled  the  whole  place  that  it  could 
receive  no  more.  They  called  these  morcells  of  paste 
the  flesh  and  bones  of  Vitzilipuztli."  Then  the  priests 
came  in  their  robes  of  oflice,  "and  putting  themselves 
in  order  about  these  morsells  and  peeees  of  paste,  they 
used  certaine  ceremonies  with  singing  and  dauncing. 
By  means  whereof  they  were  blessed  and  consecrated 
for  the  flesh  and  bones  of  this  idoll.  .  .  .  The 
ceremonies,  dauncing,  and  sacrifice  ended,  they  went 


MEXICAN  SACRAMENTS  8i 


to  unclothe  themselves,  and  the  priests  and  superiors 
of  the  temple  tooke  the  idoll  of  paste,  which  they 
spoyled  of  all  the  ornaments  it  had,  and  made  many 
peeces,  as  well  of  the  idoll  itselfe  as  of  the  tronchons 
which  were  consecrated,  and  then  they  gave  them  to 
the  people  in  maner  of  a  communion,  beginning  with 
the  greater,  and  continuing  unto  the  rest,  both  men, 
women,  and  little  children,  who  received  it  with  such 
teares,  feare,  and  reverence  as  it  was  an  admirable 
thing,  saying  that  they  did  eate  the  flesh  and  bones  of 
God,  wherewith  they  were  grieved.  Such  as  had  any 
sicke  folkes  demaunded  thereof  for  them,  and  carried  it 
with  great  reverence  and  veneration."^ 

Before  the  festival  in  December,  which  took  place 
at  the  winter  solstice,  an  image  of  the  god  Huitzilo- 
pochtli  was  made  of  seeds  of  various  sorts  kneaded 
into  a  dough  with  the  blood  of  children.  The  bones 
of  the  god  were  represented  by  pieces  of  acacia  wood. 
This  image  was  placed  on  the  chief  altar  of  the  temple, 
and  on  the  day  of  the  festival  the  king  offered  incense 
to  it.  Early  next  day  it  was  taken  down  and  set  on 
its  feet  in  a  great  hall.  Then  a  priest  took  a  flint- 
tipped  dart  and  hurled  it  into  the  breast  of  the  dough- 
image,  piercing  it  through  and  through.  This  was 
called  "killing  the  god  Huitzilopochtli  so  that  his  body 
might  be  eaten."  One  of  the  priests  cut  out  the  heart 
of  the  image  and  gave  it  to  the  king  to  eat.  The 
rest  of  the  image  was  divided  into  minute  pieces,  of 
which  every  man  great  and  small,  down  to  the  male 
children  in  the  cradle,  received  one  to  eat.  But  no 
woman  might  taste  a  morsel.  The  ceremony  was 
called  teoqitalo,  that  is,  "god  is  eaten."- 

1  Acosta,  Natural  and  Moral  His-      pp.  356-360  (Hakluyt  Society,  1S80). 
tory  of  the  Indies,  bk.  v.  c.  24,  vol.  ii.  -  ^■XTXzxoiX,  Native  Races  of  the  Pacific 

VOL.  II  G 


82  MEXICAN  SACRAMENTS  chap. 

At  another  festival  the  Mexicans  made  Httle 
images  in  human  shape  to  represent  the  cloud-capped 
mountains.  These  images  were  made  of  paste  of 
various  seeds  and  were  dressed  in  paper  ornaments. 
Some  people  made  five,  others  ten,  others  as  many 
as  fifteen  of  these  paste  images.  They  were  placed 
in  the  oratory  of  each  house  and  worshipped.  Four 
times  in  the  course  of  the  night  offerings  of  food  were 
made  to  them  in  tiny  vessels  ;  and  people  sang  and 
played  the  flute  before  them  all  night.  At  break  of 
day  the  priests  stabbed  the  images  with  a  weaver's 
instrument,  cut  off  their  heads,  and  tore  out  their 
hearts,  which  they  presented  to  the  master  of  the 
house  on  a  green  saucer.  The  bodies  of  the  images 
were  then  eaten  by  all  the  family,  especially  by  the 
servants,  "  in  order  that  by  eating  them  they  might  be 
preserved  from  certain  distempers,  to  which  those 
persons  who  were  negligent  of  worship  to  those  deities 
conceived  themselves  to  be  subject."  ^ 

We  are  now  able  to  suggest  an  explanation  of  the 
proverb  "there  are  many  Manii  at  Aricia.'"'  Certain 
loaves  made  in  the  shape  of  men  were  called  by  the 
Romans  maniae,  and  it  appears  that  this  kind  of  loaf 
was  especially  made  at  Aricia.^  Now,  Mania,  the 
name  of  one  of  these  loaves,  was  also  the  name  of  the 
Mother  or  Grandmother  of  Ghosts,^  to  whom  woollen 

5^rt:i'gJ,  iii.  297-300  (after  Torquemada) ;  extended  from  23d  December  to  nth 

Clavigero,  History  of  Mexico^  trans,  by  January).    At  another  festival  the  Mexi- 

Cullen,  i.  309  sqq. ;  Sahagun,  Histoirc  cans  made  the  semblance  of  a  bone  out 

gcnerale    des    clioses    de    la    Nouvelle-  of  paste  and  ate  it  sjfcramentally  as  the 

Espag7ie,  traduite  et  annotee  par  Jour-  bone  of  the  god.      Sahagun,  p.  33. 

danet  et  Simeon  (Paris,  1880),  p.  203  2  ggg  above,  vol.  i.  p.  5  sq. 

sq.;1.  G.  Miiller,  Geschichie  dcr  amen-  •*  Festus,  ed.   Miiller,  pp.  128,  129, 

kanischcn  Urreligioneii,  p.  605.  145.      The  reading  of  the  last  passage 

1  Clavigero,   i.   311  ;    Sahagun,   pp.  is,    however,    uncertain    ("^/   Ariciae 

74,  I56  5((^. ;   Miiller,  p.  606  ;  Bancroft,  genus  paniii fieri ;  quod  mamci\  appel- 

iii.    316.     This  festival  took  place  on  ietur"). 

the  last  day  of  the  i6th  month  (which  ''  Varro,     De     ling.     lat.     ix.     61  ; 


A  RICIA  N  SA  CRA  ME  NT 


effieies  of  men  and  women  were  dedicated  at  the 
festival  of  the  Compitaha.  These  effigies  were  hung 
at  the  doors  of  all  the  houses  in  Rome  ;  one  effigy 
was  hung  up  for  every  free  person  in  the  house,  and 
one  effigy,  of  a  different  kind,  for  every  slaVe.  The 
reason  was  that  on  this  day  the  ghosts  of  the  dead 
were  believed  to  be  going  about,  and  it  was  hoped 
that  they  would  carry  off  the  effigies  at  the  door 
instead  of  the  living  people  in  the  house.  According 
to  tradition,  these  woollen  figures  were  substitutes  for 
a  former  custom  of  sacrificing  human  beings.^  Upon 
data  so  fragmentary  and  uncertain,  it  is  of  course 
impossible  to  build  with  certainty  ;  but  it  seems  worth 
suggesting  that  the  loaves  in  human  form,  which 
appear  to  have  been  baked  at  Aricia,  were  sacramental 
bread,  and  that  in  the  old  days,  when  the  divine  King 
of  the  Wood  was  annually  slain,  loaves  were  made  in 
his  image,  like  the  paste  figures  of  the  gods  in  Mexico, 
and    were    eaten    sacramentally   by    his    worshippers.^ 

Arnobius,     Adv.      nationes,     iii.      41  ;  (Similarly   a    North  -  American    Indian 

Macrobius,  Saturn,  i.  7,  35  ;  Festus,  p.  dreamed    that    a    sacrifice    of    twenty 

128,  ed.  Miiller.     Festus  speaks  of  the  elans  was  necessary   for   the  recovery 

mother  or  grandmother  of  the  larvae;  of  a  sick  girl  ;  but  the  elans  could  not 

the  other  writers  speak  of  the  mother  be  procured,  and  the  girl's  parents  were 

of  the  lares.  allowed   to   sacrifice  twenty  loaves  in- 

1   Macrobius,  I.e.;  Festus,  pp.    121,  stead.      Relations  des  Jesitites,   1636,  p. 

239,  ed.  Miiller.      The  effigies  hung  up  11,  ed.  1858).    Poor  people  who  could 

for   the  slaves  were  called  pilae,    not  not    afford    to    sacrifice    real    animals 

maniae.       Pilae    was    also    the    name  offered  dough  images  of  them.    Suidas, 

given    to   the    straw -men   which   were  s.v.  ^ovs  e/35o,aos  ;  cp.  Hesychius,  j.  z'ly. 

thrown    to    the    bulls    to    gore   in    the  jSovs,  e/35o/xos  (3ous.     Hence  bakers  made 

arena.      Martial,  Epigr.   ii.   43,   5  sq. ;  a  regular  business  of  baking  cakes  in 

Asconius,  In  Cornel,  p.  55,  ed.  Kiess-  the  likeness  of  all  the  animals  which 

ling  and  Schoell.  were  sacrificed  to  the  gods.      Proculus, 

^  The  ancients  were  at  least  familiar  quoted  and  emended  by  Lobeck,  Agla- 

with  the  practice  of  sacrificing  images  opiiaiiius,  p.  1079.      When  Cyzicus  was 

made   of  dough  or  other  materials   as  besieged  by  Mithridates  and  the  people 

substitutes  for  the  animals  themselves.  could  not  procure  a  black  cow  to  sacri- 

It  was  a  recognised  principle  that  when  fice   at    the    rites    of   Proserpine,    they 

an  animal  could  not  be  easily  obtained  made  a  cow  of  dough  and  placed  it  at 

for  sacrifice,  it  was   lawful  to  offer  an  the    altar.       Plutarch,    Liieiilhis,     10. 

image   of   it   made   of   bread    or   wax.  In  a  Boeotian  sacrifice  to  Hercules,  in 

Servius     on     Virgil,     Aen.     ii.     116.  place  of  the  ram  which  was  the  proper 


ARICIAN  SACRAMENT 


The  Mexican  sacraments  in  honour  of  Huitzilopochtli 
were  also  accompanied  by  the  sacrifice  of  human 
victims.  The  tradition  that  the  founder  of  the  sacred 
grove  at  Aricia  was  a  man  named  Manius,  from 
whom  many  Manii  were  descended,  would  thus  be  an 
etymological  myth  invented  to  explain  the  name 
maniae  as  applied  to  these  sacramental  loaves.  A 
dim  recollection  of  the  original  connection  of  these 
loaves  with  human  sacrifices  may  perhaps  be  traced 
in  the  story  that  the  effigies  dedicated  to  Mania  at 
the  Compitalia  were  substitutes  for  human  victims. 
The  story  itself,  however,  is  probably  devoid  of 
foundation,  since  the  practice  of  putting  up  dummies 
to  divert  the  attention  of  demons  from  living  people 
is  not  uncommon.  For  example,  when  an  epidemic  is 
raging,  some  of  the  Dyaks  of  Borneo  set  up  wooden 
images  at  their  doors  in  the  hope  that  the  demons  of 
the  plague  will  be  deceived  into  carrying  off  the  images 
instead  of  the  people.^  The  Minahassa  of  Celebes 
will  sometimes  transport  a  sick  man  to  another  house, 
leaving  on  his  bed  a  dummy  made  up  of  a  pillow  and 
clothes.  This  dummy  the  demon  is  supposed  to  take 
by  mistake  for  the  sick  man,  who  consequently  re- 
covers." Similarly  in  Burma  it  is  thought  that  a  patient 
will  recover  if  an  effigy  be  buried  in  a  small  coffin.' 
The  custom  of  killing  the  god  has  now  been  traced 

victim,    an    apple    was    regularly    sub-  were  sacrificed.      Schol.  on  Thucydides, 

stituted,  four  chips  being  stuck  in  it  to  i.    126,   quoted   by   Lobeck,    I.e.      We 

represent    legs    and   two    to    represent  have  seen  above  (p.  53)  that  the  poorer 

horns.    Pollux,  i.  30  sq.    The  Athenians  Egyptians  offered  dough  images  of  pigs 

are  said  to  have  once  offered  to  Hercules  and  ate  them  sacramentally. 

a  similar  substitute  for  an  ox.    Zenobius,  1  p_  j_    y^^j^    ^^r;/<,'<,V   Wester  Af- 

Cent.  V.  22.      And  the  Locrians,  being  ^^^,^^.        -^^ 

at  a  loss  for  an  ox  to  sacrifice,  made 

one  out  of  figs  and  sticks,  and  ofiered  ^  N.    Graafland,   De   Minahassa,    i. 

it   instead   of  the    animal.       Zenobius,  3-0- 

Cent.   V.  5.     At  the  Athenian  festival  -^  Shway    '^'oe,     The     Biinnan,    ii. 

of  the  Diasia  cakes  shaped  like  animals  13S. 


STRONG  FOOD  85 


amongst  peoples  who  have  reached  the  agricultural 
stage  of  society.  We  have  seen  that  the  spirit  of  the 
corn,  or  of  other  cultivated  plants,  is  commonly  repre- 
sented either  in  human  or  in  animal  form,  and  that  a 
custom  has  prevailed  of  killing  annually*  either  the 
human  or  the  animal  representative  of  the  god.  The 
reason  for  thus  killing  the  corn -spirit  in  the  person  of 
his  representative  has  been  given  implicitly  in  the 
earlier  part  of  this  chapter.  But,  further,  we  have 
found  a  widespread  custom  of  eating  the  god  sacra- 
mentally,  either  in  the  shape  of  the  man  or  animal  who 
represents  the  god,  or  in  the  shape  of  bread  made  in 
human  or  animal  form.  The  reasons  for  thus  partaking 
of  the  body  of  the  god  are,  from  the  primitive  stand- 
point, simple  enough.  The  savage  commonly  believes 
that  by  eating  the  flesh  of  an  animal  or  man  he 
acquires  not  only  the  physical,  but  even  the  moral  and 
intellectual  qualities  which  were  characteristic  of  that 
animal  or  man.  To  take  examples.  The  Creeks, 
Cherokees,  and  kindred  tribes  of  North  American 
Indians  "believe  that  nature  is  possessed  of  such  a 
property,  as  to  transfuse  into  men  and  animals  the 
qualities,  either  of  the  food  they  use,  or  of  those  objects 
that  are  presented  to  their  senses  ;  he  who  feeds  on 
venison  is,  according  to  their  physical  system,  swifter 
and  more  sagacious  than  the  man  who  lives  on  the 
flesh  of  the  clumsy  bear,  or  helpless  dunghill  fowls,  the 
slow-footed  tame  cattle,  or  the  heavy  wallowing  swine. 
This  is  the  reason  that  several  of  their  old  men  recom- 
mend, and  say,  that  formerly  their  greatest  chieftains 
observed  a  constant  rule  in  their  diet,  and  seldom  ate 
of  any  animal  of  a  gross  quality,  or  heavy  motion  of 
body,  fancying  it  conveyed  a  dulness  through  the  whole 
system,  and  disabled  them  from  exerting  themselves 


86  EATING  ANIMALS  chap. 

with  proper  vigour  in  their  martial,  civil,  and  religious 
duties."  ^  The  Zaparo  Indians  of  South  America  "will, 
unless  from  necessity,  in  most  cases  not  eat  any  heavy 
meats,  such  as  tapir  and  peccary,  but  confine  them- 
selves to  birds,  monkeys,  deer,  fish,  etc.,  principally 
because  they  argue  that  the  heavier  meats  make  them 
unwieldy,  like  the  animals  who  supply  the  fiesh,  imped- 
ing their  agility,  and  unfitting  them  for  the  chase."- 
The  Namaquas  abstain  from  eating  the  flesh  of  hares, 
because  they  think  it  would  make  them  faint-hearted 
as  a  hare.  But  they  eat  the  flesh  of  the  lion,  or  drink 
the  blood  of  the  leopard  or  lion  to  get  the  courage 
and  strength  of  these  beasts.^  The  Arabs  of  Eastern 
Africa  believe  that  an  unguent  of  lion's  fat  inspires  a 
man  with  boldness,  and  makes  the  wild  beasts  flee 
in  terror  before  him.^  When  a  serious  disease  has 
attacked  a  Zulu  kraal,  the  medicine -man  takes  the 
bone  of  a  very  old  dog,  which  has  died  a  natural  death 
from  mere  old  age,  or  the  bone  of  an  old  cow,  bull,  or 
other  very  old  animal,  and  administers  it  to  the  healthy 
as  well  as  to  the  sick  people,  in  order  that  they  may 
live  to  be  as  old  as  the  animal  of  whose  bone  they  have 
partaken.''  The  Miris  of  Northern  India  prize  tiger's 
flesh  as  food  for  men  ;  it  gives  them  strength  and 
courage.  But  "it  is  not  suited  for  women;  it  would 
make  them  too  strong-minded."  '^  Amongst  the  Dyaks 
of  North-west   Borneo  young  men  and  warriors  may 

1  James     Adair,      History     of     the      way,  Religions  System  of  the  Amaziilii, 
American  Indians,  p.   133.  y>-  438  note. 

2  Alfred    Simson,     Travels    in    the  hi  -dt         t     t-  a^  ■ 
TTT-,,      r  -r.        7      ,T       ,          on   >                    Jcrome  Becker,  La  I  ic  en  Afrunie, 
Wilds  of  Ecuador  (London,  1887),  p.       ,-d     ■         1  t>          1      ,cc»\    ••    Jc.^ 

£o       -J    •      T  ,    r     ,       .     I    '  (Pans  and  Brussels,  1887),  u.  366. 

168 ;    id.   in  Journal  of  the  Anthrop.  >  /  />        j 

Institute,  vii.  503.  ^  Callaway,  Nursery    Tales,    Tradi- 

3  Theophilus  Ilahn,    Tsuni-  \\  Goam,  '''""•f.  '^""'  Histories  of  the  Zulus,  p.  1 75 
the  Supreme  Being  of  the  Khoi-Khoi,  ''''''^''• 

p.    106.       Compare    John    Buchanan,  ''  Dalton,  Ethnology  of  Bengal,    p. 

The  Shire  Highlands,  p.   138  ;  Calla-       33. 


TO   GET  THEIR   QUALITIES  87 


not  eat  venison,  because  it  would  make  them  as  timid 
as  deer  ;  but  the  women  and  very  old  men  are  free  to 
eat  it.^     Men  of  the  Euro  and  Aru  Islands,  East  Indies, 
eat  the  flesh  of  dogs  in  order  to  be  bold  and  nimble  in 
war.-    Amongst  the  Papuans  of  the  Port  Moresby  and 
Motumotu  districts,  New  Guinea,  young  lads  eat  strong 
pig,  wallaby,  and  large  fish,  in  order  to  acquire  the 
streno-th  of  the  animal  or  fish/     In  Corea  the  bones  of 
tigers  fetch  a  higher  price  than  those  of  leopards  as 
a  means  of  inspiring  courage.     A  Chinaman  in  Soul 
bought  and  ate  a  whole  tiger  to  make  himself  brave 
and  fierce.^    The  special  seat  of  courage,  according  to 
the   Chinese,   is  the  gall-bladder;   so  they  sometimes 
procure  the  gall-bladders  of  tigers  and  bears,  and  eat 
the  bile  in  the  belief  that  it  will  give  them  courage.^ 
In  Norse  history,   Ingiald,  son  of  King  Aunund,  was 
timid  in  his  youth,  but  after  eating  the  heart  of  a  wolf 
he  became  very  bold  ;  and  Hialto  gained  strength  and 
courage  by  eating  the  heart  of  a  bear  and  drinking  its 
blood."      In  Morocco  lethargic  patients  are  given  ants 
to  swallow;  and  to  eat  lion's  flesh  will  make  a  coward 
brave.^      When  a  child  is  late  in  learning  to  speak, 
the  Turks  of  Central  Asia  will  give  it  the  tongues 
of  certain  birds  to  eat.^     A   North  American  Indian 
thought  that  brandy  must  be  a  decoction  of  hearts  and 
tongues,  "Because," said  he,  "after  drinking  it  I  fear  no- 
thing, and  I  talk  wonderfully."  •*    The  people  of  Darfur, 

1  St.  John,  Life  in  the  Forests  of  the  North  China  Branch  R,  Asiatic  Society, 

Far  East;^\.  186,  206.  New  Series,  i.  (Shanghai,  1865)  p.  35 

-  Riedel,    De    shiik-en    kroesharige  sq. 
rassen  tusschen  Selebes  en  Papua,  pp.  «  Miiller    on     Saxo     Grammaticus, 

10,  262.  vol.  ii.  p.  60. 

3  James    Chahners,    Piojieering    in  '  Leared,  Morocco  and  the  Moors,  p. 

New  Guinea,  p.  166.  281. 

•*  Proceedings  Royal  Geogr.   Society,  »  Vambery,     Das     Tiirkenvolk,     p. 

N.  S.  viii.  (1886)  p.  307.  218. 

5  J.  Henderson,  "The  Medicine  and  ^  Charlevoix,  Histoire  de  la  Nouvelle 

Medical  Practice  of  the  Chinese,  "_/''"''"•  France,  vi.  8. 


88  EATING  MEN 


in  Central  Africa,  think  that  the  liver  is  the  seat  of  the 
soul,  and  that  a  man  may  enlarge  his  soul  by  eating 
the  liver  of  an  animal.  "  Whenever  an  animal  is  killed 
its  liver  is  taken  out  and  eaten,  but  the  people  are 
most  careful  not  to  touch  it  with  their  hands,  as  it  is 
considered  sacred ;  it  is  cut  up  in  small  pieces  and 
eaten  raw,  the  bits  being  conveyed  to  the  mouth  on 
the  point  of  a  knife,  or  the  sharp  point  of  a  stick.  Any 
one  who  may  accidentally  touch  the  liver  is  strictly 
forbidden  to  partake  of  it,  which  prohibition  is  re- 
garded as  a  great  misfortune  for  him."  Women  are 
not  allowed  to  eat  liver,  because  they  have  no  soul.^ 

Again,  the  flesh  and  blood  of  brave  men  are  com- 
monly eaten  and  drunk  to  inspire  bravery.  The  Aus- 
tralian Kamilaroi  eat  the  heart  and  liver  of  a  brave 
man  to  get  his  courage."  It  is  a  common  practice  with 
the  Australian  blacks  to  kill  a  man,  cut  out  his  caul-fat, 
and  rub  themselves  with  it,  "the  belief  being  that  all 
the  qualifications,  both  physical  and  mental,  of  the 
previous  owner  of  the  fat  were  thus  communicated  to 
him  who  used  it."^  The  Italones  of  the  Philippine 
Islands  drink  the  blood  of  their  slain  enemies,  and  eat 
part  of  the  back  of  their  heads  and  of  their  entrails 
raw,  in  order  to  acquire  their  courage.  For  the  same 
reason  the  Efugaos,  another  tribe  of  the  Philippines, 
suck  the  brains  of  their  foes.^  Amongst  the  Kimbunda 
of  Western  Africa,  when  a  new  king  succeeds  to  the 
throne,  a  brave  prisoner  of  war  is  killed  in  order  that 
the  king  and  nobles  may  eat  his  flesh,  and  so  acquire 

1  Felkin,  "Notes  on  the  For  tribe  3  Brough      Smyth,     Aborigines      of 
of  Central  Africa,"  in  Proceedings  of  the       Victoria,  ii.  313. 

/\oya! Society  of  Ediiilniro/i, -am.  {iS?,^-  *  Bhimentritt,     "  Der     Ahnencultus 

1886)  p.  218.  und   die  religiosen   Anschauungen  der 

Malaien     des    Philippinen-Archipels," 

2  W.  Ridley,  Kamilaroi,  p.  160.  in    Mittheihiugen    d.     IViener    Geogr. 


Gesellschaft,  1882,  p.   154. 


TO   GET  THEIR   QUALITIES 


his  Strength  and  courage.^  The  Basutos  cut  off  pieces 
of  their  slain  enemies  and  make  them  into  a  powder, 
"  which  is  supposed  to  communicate  to  them  the  cour- 
age, skill,  and  grood  fortune  of  their  adversaries."^ 
The  Zulus  think  that  by  eating  the  centre  of  the  fore- 
head and  the  eyebrow  of  an  enemy  they  acquire  the 
power  of  looking  steadfastly  at  a  foe.^  In  the  Shire 
Hipfhlands  of  Africa  those  who  kill  a  brave  man  eat 
his  heart  to  get  his  courage.^  For  the  same  purpose 
the  Chinese  eat  the  bile  of  notorious  bandits  who  have 
been  executed.^  In  New  Zealand  "the  chief  was  an 
atua  [god],  but  there  were  powerful  and  powerless 
gods  ;  each  naturally  sought  to  make  himself  one  of 
the  former  ;  the  plan  therefore  adopted  was  to  incor- 
porate the  spirits  of  others  with  their  own  ;  thus,  when 
a  warrior  slew  a  chief  he  immediately  gouged  out  his 
eyes  and  swallowed  them,  the  atua  tonga,  or  divinity, 
being  supposed  to  reside  in  that  organ  ;  thus  he  not 
only  killed  the  body,  but  also  possessed  himself  of  the 
soul  of  his  enemy,  and  consequently  the  more  chiefs 
he  slew  the  greater  did  his  divinity  become."^ 

It  is  now  easy  to  understand  why  a  savage  should 
desire  to  partake  of  the  flesh  of  an  animal  or  man 
whom  he  regards  as  divine.  By  eating  the  body  of 
the  god  he  shares  in  the  god's  attributes  and  powers. 
And  when  the  god  is  a  corn-god,  the  corn  is  his  proper 
body  ;  when  he  is  a  vine-god,  the  juice  of  the  grape  is 
his  blood  ;  and  so  by  eating  the  bread  and  drinking 

1  Magyar,  Reisen  in  Siid-Afrika  in  ^  R.  Taylor,  Te  Ika  a  Maid,  or  New 
den  Jahren  1849-1857,  pp.  273-276.  Zealand  and  its  Inhahitaiits  (London, 

2  Casalis,   The  Basutos,  p.  257  sq.  1870),  p.  352.      Cp.  il>.  p.  I73  ;  Ellis, 

3  Ca\\zvi7)Ly,Nici-seiyTales,Traditio)is  Polynesian     Researches,     i.      35^;     J* 
and  Histories  of  the  Zulus,  \>.  16:^  note.  Dumont  D'Urville,    Voyage  autour  du 

*  John  Buchanan,   The  Shire  High-  Monde    snr   la    coi'vette    Astrolabe,    ii. 

lands,  p.  138.  547  ;  Journal  of  the  Anthrop.    Inst. 

^  Journal  of  the  North  China  Branch  xix.  108. 
Royal  Asiatic  Society,  I.e. 


90  CALIFORNIAN  SACRIFICE  chap. 

the  wine  the  worshipper  partakes  of  the  real  body  and 
blood  of  his  god.  Thus  the  drinking  of  wine  in  the 
rites  of  a  vine -god  like  Dionysus  is  not  an  act  of 
revelry,  it  is  a  solemn  sacrament.^ 


§  12. — Killing  the  divine  animal 

It  remains  to  show  that  hunting  and  pastoral  tribes, 
as  well  as  agricultural  peoples,  have  been  in  the  habit 
of  killing  their  gods.  The  gods  whom  hunters  and 
shepherds  adore  and  kill  are  animals  pure  and  simple, 
not  animals  regarded  as  embodiments  of  other  super- 
natural beings.  Our  first  example  is  drawn  from  the 
Indians  of  California,  who,  living  in  a  fertile  country" 
under  a  serene  and  temperate  sky,  nevertheless  rank 
near  the  bottom  of  the  savage  scale.  The  Acagchemen 
tribe  of  San  Juan  Capistrano  adored  the  great  buzzard. 
Once  a  year,  at  a  great  festival  called  Panes  or  bird- 
feast,  they  carried  one  of  these  birds  in  procession 
to  their  chief  temple,  which  seems  to  have  been  merely 
an  unroofed  enclosure  of  stakes.  Here  they  killed  the 
bird  without  losing  a  drop  of  its  blood.  The  skin  was 
removed  entire  and  preserved  with  the  feathers  as  a 
relic  or  for  the  purpose  of  making  the  festal  garment 
or  paclt.  The  carcass  was  buried  in  a  hole  in  the 
temple,  and  the  old  women  gathered  round  the  grave 
weeping  and  moaning  bitterly,  while  they  threw  various 
kinds  of  seeds  or  pieces  of  food  on  it,  crying  out,  "Why 

1  On  the  custom  of  eating  a  god,  see  wine  as  the  blood  of  a  god,  see  above, 

also  a  paper  by  Felix  Liebrecht,  "  Der  vol.  i.  p.  183  sqq. 
aufgegessene  Gott,"inZ«;'  Volksktindc, 

pp.  436-439;    and   especially  W.    R.  ^  This   does  not   refer   to   the  Cali- 

Smith,    art.    "Sacrifice,"  Encycl.  Bri-  fornian  peninsula,  which  is  an  arid  and 

tann.  9th  ed.  vol.  xxi.  p.  137  sq.      On  treeless  wilderness  of  rock  and  sand. 


OF  THE  BUZZARD  91 


did  you  run  away  ?  Would  you  not  have  been  better 
with  us  ? "  and  so  on.  They  said  that  the  Panes  was 
a  woman  who  had  run  off  to  the  mountains  and  there 
been  changed  into  .a  bird  by  the  god  Chinigchinich. 
They  beHeved  that  though  they  sacrificed  the  bird 
annually,  she  came  to  life  again  and  returned  to  her 
home  in  the  mountains.  Moreover  they  thought  that 
"  as  often  as  the  bird  was  killed,  it  became  multiplied ; 
because  every  year  all  the  different  Capitanes  celebrated 
the  same  feast  of  the  Panes,  and  were  firm  in  the 
opinion  that  the  birds  sacrificed  were  but  one  and  the 
same  female."^ 

The  unity  in  multiplicity  thus  postulated  by  the 
Californians  is  very  noticeable  and  helps  to  explain 
their  motive  for  killing  the  divine  bird.  The  notion  of 
the  life  of  a  species  as  distinct  from  that  of  an  individual, 
easy  and  obvious  as  it  seems  to  us,  appears  to  be  one 
which  the  Californian  savage  cannot  grasp.  He  is 
unable  to  conceive  the  life  of  the  species  otherwise 
than  as  an  individual  life,  and  therefore  as  exposed  to 
the  same  dangers  and  calamities  which  menace  and 
finally  destroy  the  life  of  the  individual.  Apparently 
he  thinks  that  a  species  left  to  itself  will  grow  old  and 
die  like  an  individual,  and  that  therefore  some  step 
must  be  taken  to  save  from  extinction  the  particular 
species  which  he  regards  as  divine.  The  only  means 
he  can  think  of  to  avert  the  catastrophe  is  to  kill  a 
member  of  the  species  in  whose  veins  the  tide  of  life  is 
still  running  strong  and  has  not  yet  stagnated  among 
the  fens  of  old  age.  The  life  thus  diverted  from  one 
channel  will  flow,  he  fancies,  more  freshly  and  freely 
in   a  new  one  ;  in  other  words,  the  slain  animal  will 

1  Boscana,  in  Alfred  Robinson's  Life      291  sq.;  Bancroft,  Native  Races  of  the 
in   California   (New  York,    1846),    p.      Pacific  States,  iii.  168. 


92  EGYPTIAN  SACRIFICE  chap. 

revive  and  enter  on  a  new  term  of  life  with  all  the 
spring  and  energy  of  youth.  To  us  this  reasoning  is 
transparently  absurd,  but  so  too  is  the  custom.  If  a 
better  explanation,  that  is,  one  more  consonant  with 
the  facts  and  with  the  principles  of  savage  thought, 
can  be  given  of  the  custom,  I  will  willingly  withdraw 
the  one  here  proposed.  A  similar  confusion,  it  may  be 
noted,  between  the  individual  life  and  the  life  of  the 
species  was  made  by  the  Samoans.  Each  family  had 
for  its  god  a  particular  species  of  animal ;  yet  the 
death  of  one  of  these  animals,  for  example  an  owl,  was 
not  the  death  of  the  god,  "  he  was  supposed  to  be  yet 
alive,  and  incarnate  in  all  the  owls  in  existence."  ^ 

The  rude  Californian  rite  which  we  have  just 
considered  has  a  close  parallel  in  the  religion  of  ancient 
Egypt.  The  Thebans  and  all  other  Egyptians  who 
worshipped  the  Theban  god  Ammon  held  rams  to  be 
sacred  and  would  not  sacrifice  them.  But  once  a  year 
at  the  festival  of  Ammon  they  killed  a  ram,  skinned  it, 
and  clothed  the  imag^e  of  the  grod  in  the  skin.  Then 
they  mourned  over  the  ram  and  buried  it  in  a  sacred 
tomb.  The  custom  was  explained  by  a  story  that 
Zeus  had  once  exhibited  himself  to  Hercules  clad  in 
the  fleece  and  wearing  the  head  of  a  ram.^  Of  course 
the  ram  in  this  case  was  simply  the  beast  -  god  of 
Thebes,  as  the  wolf  was  the  beast -god  of  Lycopolis, 
and  the  goat  was  the  beast -god  of  Mendes.  In 
other  words,  the  ram  was  Ammon  himself.  On  the 
monuments,  it  is  true,  Ammon  appears  in  semi- 
human  form  with  the  body  of  a  man  and  the  head  of 
a  ram.^     But  this  only  shows  that  he  was  in  the  usual 

1  Turner,.S'iTw^a,  p.  21,  cp.  pp.  26,  6i.  •'  Ed.    Meyer,    Gesihichic  dcs  Alter- 

-  Herodotus,    ii.    42.      The   custom  M//;/.'.f,  i.§  58.    Cp.  Wilkinson,  il/a^wwj 

has    been    already    referred    to,    above,  and  Customs  of  the  Ancient  Egyptians, 

p.  63.  iii.   I  sqq.  (ed.    1S78). 


OF  THE  RAM 


chrysalis  state  through  which  beast-gods  regularly  pass 
before  they  emerge  as  full-fledged  anthropomorphic 
gods.  The  ram,  therefore,  was  killed,  not  as  a 
sacrifice  to  Ammon,  but  as  the  god  himself,  whose 
identity  with  the  beast  is  plainly  shown  by  the  custom 
of  clothing  his  imao-e  in  the  skin  of  the  slain  ram. 
The  reason  for  thus  killing  the  ram-god  annually  may 
have  been  that  which  I  have  assigned  for  the  general 
custom  of  killing  the  god  and  for  the  special  Cali- 
fornian  custom  of  killing  the  divine  buzzard.  As 
applied  to  Egypt,  this  explanation  is  supported  by 
the  analogy  of  the  bull-god  Apis,  who  was  not  suffered 
to  outlive  a  certain  term  of  years. ^  The  intention  ot 
thus  putting  a  limit  to  the  life  of  the  god  was,  as  I 
have  argued,  to  secure  him  from  the  weakness  and 
frailty  of  age.  The  same  reasoning  would  explain  the 
custom — probably  an  older  one — of  putting  the  beast- 
god  to  death  annually,  as  was  done  with  the  ram  of 
Thebes. 

One  point  in  the  Theban  ritual  —  the  applica- 
tion of  the  skin  to  the  image  of  the  god — deserves 
special  attention.  If  the  god  was  at  first  the 
living  ram,  his  representation  by  an  image  must 
have  origrinated  later.  But  how  did  it  orimnate  ? 
The  answer  to  this  question  is  perhaps  furnished  by 
the  practice  of  preserving  the  skin  of  the  animal  which 
is  slain  as  divine.  The  Californians,  as  we  have  seen, 
preserved  the  skin  of  the  buzzard  ;  and  the  skin  of  the 
goat,  which  is  killed  on  the  harvest-field  as  a  repre- 
sentative of  the  corn-spirit,  is  kept  for  various  super- 
stitious purposes.^  The  skin  in  fact  was  kept  as  a 
token  or  memorial  of  the  god,  or  rather  as  containing 
in  it  a  part  of  the  divine  life,  and  it  had  only  to  be 

1  Above,  p.  6 1  sq.  '^  Above,  p.  15  sq. 


94  KILLING    THE 


Stuffed  or  stretched  upon  a  frame  to  become  a  regular 
image  of  him.  At  first  an  image  of  this  kind  would 
be  renewed  annually,^  the  new  image  being  provided 
by  the  skin  of  the  slain  animal.  But  from  annual 
images  to  permanent  images  the  transition  is  easy. 
We  have  seen  that  the  older  custom  of  cutting  a 
new  May  -  tree  every  year  was  superseded  by  the 
practice  of  maintaining  a  permanent  May-pole,  which 
was,  however,  annually  decked  with  fresh  leaves  and 
flowers  and  even  surmounted  each  year  by  a  fresh 
young  tree.-  Similarly  when  the  stuffed  skin,  as  a 
representative  of  the  god,  was  replaced  by  a  permanent 
image  of  him  in  wood,  stone,  or  metal,  the  permanent 
image  was  annually  clad  in  the  fresh  skin  of  the  slain 
animal.  When  this  stage  had  been  reached,  the 
custom  of  killing  the  ram  came  naturally  to  be  inter- 
preted as  a  sacrifice  offered  to  the  image,  and  was 
explained  by  a  story  like  that  of  Amnion  and 
Hercules. 

West  Africa  furnishes  another  example  of  the 
annual  killing  of  a  sacred  animal  and  the  preservation 
of  its  skin.  The  negroes  of  Issapoo,  in  the  island  of 
Fernando  Po,  regard  the  cobra -capella  as  their 
guardian  deity,  who  can  do  them  good  or  ill,  bestow 
riches  or  inflict  disease  and  death.  The  skin  of  one  of 
these  reptiles  is  hung  tail  downwards  from  a  branch  of 
the  highest  tree  in  the  public  square,  and  the  placing 
of  it  on  the  tree  is  an  annual   ceremony.     As  soon   as 

^  The   Italmens  of   Kamtchatka,    at  Steller,    Beschreibiing  von   dcin   Lande 

the  close  of  the  fishing  season,  used  to  KamtscJiatka,    p.    327    sq.       According 

make  the -figure  of  a  wolf  out  of  grass.  to    Hartknoch     (Dissertat.     histor.    de 

This    figure     they    carefully     kept    the  variis   rebus  Prtissicis,    p.    163  ;    Alt- 

whole  year,   believing   that   it  wedded  prcussen,  p.  161)  the  image  of  the  old 

with  their  maidens  and  prevented  them  Prussian  god  Curcho  was  annually  re- 

from   giving  birth  to  twins;  for  twins  newed.     But  see  Mannhardt, /)/« A'^;-;/- 

were     esteemed     a    great    misfortune.  dd/iio;icii,-p.  2^.     ^  Above,  vol.  i.  p.  81. 


DIVINE  ANIMAL  95 


the  ceremony  is  over,  all  children  born  within  the  past 
year  are  carried  out  and  their  hands  made  to  touch  the 
tail  of  the  serpent's  skin/  The  latter  custom  is  clearly 
a  way  of  placing  the  infants  under  the  protection  of 
the  tribal  god.  Similarly  in  Senegambia  a  python  is 
expected  to  visit  every  child  of  the  Python  clan  within 
eight  days  after  birth  ;  ^  and  the  Psylli,  a  Snake  clan 
of  ancient  Africa,  used  to  expose  their  infants  to 
snakes  in  the  belief  that  the  snakes  would  not  harm 
true-born  children  of  the  clan.^ 

In  the  Californian,  Egyptian,  and  Fernando  Po 
customs  the  animal  slain  probably  is,  or  once  was,  a 
totem.  At  all  events,  in  all  three  cases  the  worship  of 
the  animal  seems  to  have  no  relation  to  agriculture, 
and  may  therefore  be  presumed  to  date  from  the 
hunter  or  pastoral  stage  of  society.  The  same  may  be 
said  of  the  following  custom,  though  the  people  who 
practise  it — the  Zuni  Indians  of  New  Mexico — are 
now  settled  in  walled  villages  or  towns  of  a  peculiar 
type,  and  practise  agriculture  and  the  arts  of  pottery 
and  weaving.  But  the  Zuni  custom  is  marked  by 
certain  features  which  appear  to  place  it  in  a  some- 
what different  category  from  the  preceding  cases.  It 
may  be  well  therefore  to  describe  it  at  full  length  in 
the  words  of  an  eye-witness. 

"With  midsummer  the  heat  became  intense.  My 
brother  \i.e.  adopted  Indian  brother]  and  I  sat,  day 
after  day,  in  the  cool  under- rooms  of  our  house, — the 
latter  [^7^]  busy  with  his  quaint  forge  and  crude  appli- 
ances,   working     Mexican    coins    over    into    bangles, 

1  T.  J.    Hutchinson,    Impressions  of  '^  Revue  d^Ethnographie,  iii.  397. 

Western    Africa    (London,    1S58),    p.  ^  Vano    in    Priscian,   x.    32,   vol.   i. 

196  sq.     The  writer  does  not  expressly  p.  524,  ed.  Keil ;   Pliny,  Nat.  Hist.  vii. 

state  that  a  serpent  is  killed  annually,  §  14.      Pliny's  statement  is  to  be  cor- 

but  his  statement  implies  it.  rected  by  Varro's. 


96  ZUNI  SACRIFICE 


girdles,  ear-rings,  buttons,  and  what  not  for  savage 
ornament.  .  .  .  One  day  as  I  sat  watching  him,  a 
procession  of  fifty  men  went  hastily  down  the  hill,  and 
off  westward  over  the  plain.  They  w^ere  solemnly  led 
by  a  painted  and.  shell -bedecked  priest,  and  followed 
by  the  torch -bearing  Shu -lu- wit -si,  or  God  of  Fire. 
After  they  had  vanished,  I  asked  old  brother  what  it 
all  meant. 

"'They  are  going,'  said  he,  'to  the  city  of  the 
Ka-ka  and  the  home  of  our  others.' 

"  Four  days  after,  toward  sunset,  costumed  and 
masked  in  the  beautiful  paraphernalia  of  the  Ka-k'ok- 
shi,  or  '  Good  Dance,'  they  returned  in  file  up  the 
same  pathway,  each  bearing  in  his  arms  a  basket  filled 
with  living,  squirming  turtles,  which  he  regarded  and 
carried  as  tenderly  as  a  mother  would  her  infant. 
Some  of  the  wretched  reptiles  were  carefully  wrapped 
in  soft  blankets,  their  heads  and  forefeet  protruding, — 
and,  mounted  on  the  backs  of  the  plume -bedecked 
pilgrims,  made  ludicrous  but  solemn  caricatures  of 
little  children  in  the  same  position.  While  I  was  at 
supper  upstairs  that  evening,  the  governor's  brother- 
in-law  came  in.  He  was  welcomed  by  the  family  as 
if  a  messenger  from  heaven.  He  bore  in  his  tremulous 
fingers  one  of  the  much  abused  and  rebellious  turtles. 
Paint  still  adhered  to  his  hands  and  bare  feet,  which 
led  me  to  infer  that  he  had  formed  one  of  the  sacred 
embassy. 

"'So  you  went  to  Ka-thlu-el-lon,  did  you?'  1 
asked. 

"  '  E'e,'  replied  the  weary  man,  in  a  voice  husky 
with  long  chanting,  as  he  sank,  almost  exhausted,  on  a 
roll  of  skins  which  had  been  placed  for  him,  and 
tenderly  laid  the  turtle  on  the  floor.      No  sooner  did 


OF   THE    TURTLE  97 


the  creature  find  itself  at  liberty  than  it  made  off  as 
fast  as  its  lame  legs  would  take  it.  Of  one  accord  the 
family  forsook  dish,  spoon,  and  drinking-cup,  and 
grabbing  from  a  sacred  meal -bowl  whole  handfuls  of 
the  contents,  hurriedly  followed  the  turtle  about  the 
room,  into  dark  corners,  around  water-jars,  behind  the 
grinding-troughs,  and  out  into  the  middle  of  the  floor 
again,  praying  and  scattering  meal  on  its  back  as  they 
went.  At  last,  strange  to  say,  it  approached  the  foot- 
sore man  who  had  brought  it. 

"  '  Ha ! '  he  exclaimed,  with  emotion  ;  '  see,  it  comes 
to  me  again  ;  ah,  what  great  favours  the  fathers  of  all 
grant  me  this  day,'  and  passing  his  hand  gently  over 
the  sprawling  animal,  he  inhaled  from  his  palm  deeply 
and  long,  at  the  same  time  invoking  the  favour  of  the 
gods.  Then  he  leaned  his  chin  upon  his  hand,  and 
with  large  wistful  eyes  regarded  his  ugly  captive  as 
it  sprawled  about,  blinking  its  meal-bedimmed  eyes, 
and  clawing  the  smooth  floor  in  memory  of  its  native 
element.     At  this  juncture  I  ventured  a  question  : 

"  '  Why  do  you  not  let  him  go,  or  give  him  some 
water  ? ' 

"Slowly  the  man  turned  his  eyes  toward  me,  an 
odd  mixture  of  pain,  indignation,  and  pity  on  his  face, 
while  the  worshipful  family  stared  at  me  with  holy 
horror. 

"  '  Poor  younger  brother ! '  he  said  at  last,  '  know 
you  not  how  precious  it  is  .-^  It  die  ?  It  will  not  die  ; 
I  tell  you,  it  cannot  die.' 

"  '  But  it  will  die  if  you  don't  feed  it  and  give  it 
water.' 

" '  I  tell  you  it  cannot  die ;  it  will  only  change 
houses  to-morrow,  and  go  back  to  the  home  of  its 
brothers.      Ah,   well !      How   should  you   know  ? '   he 

VOL.  II  H 


ZUNI  SACRIFICE 


mused.  Turning  to  the  blinded  turtle  again  :  '  Ah ! 
my  poor  dear  lost  child  or  parent,  my  sister  or  brother 
to  have  been  !  Who  knows  which  ?  Maybe  my  own 
great-grandfather  or  mother  ! '  And  with  this  he  fell  to 
weeping  most  pathetically,  and,  tremulous  with  sobs, 
which  were  echoed  by  the  women  and  children,  he 
buried  his  face  in  his  hands.  Filled  with  sympathy 
for  his  grief,  however  mistaken,  I  raised  the  turtle  to 
my  lips  and  kissed  its  cold  shell ;  then  depositing  it  on 
the  floor,  hastily  left  the  grief-stricken  family  to  their 
sorrows.  Next  day,  with  prayers  and  tender  beseech- 
ings,  plumes,  and  offerings,  the  poor  turtle  was  killed, 
and  its  flesh  and  bones  were  removed  and  deposited 
in  the  little  river,  that  it  might  '  return  once  more  to 
eternal  life  among  its  comrades  in  the  dark  waters  of 
the  lake  of  the  dead.'  The  shell,  carefully  scraped  and 
dried,  was  made  into  a  dance-rattle,  and,  covered  by  a 
piece  of  buckskin,  it  still  hangs  from  the  smoke-stained 
rafters  of  my  brother's  house.  Once  a  Navajo  tried 
to  buy  it  for  a  ladle  ;  loaded  with  indignant  reproaches, 
he  was  turned  out  of  the  house.  Were  any  one  to 
venture  the  suggestion  that  the  turtle  no  longer  lived, 
his  remark  would  cause  a  flood  of  tears,  and  he  would 
be  reminded  that  it  had  only  '  changed  houses  and 
gone  to  live  for  ever  in  the  home  of  "  our  lost 
others."  ' "  ^ 

In  this  custom  we  find  expressed  in  the  clearest 
way  a  belief  in  the  transmigration  of  human  souls  into 
the  bodies  of  turtles.-     The  same  belief  in  transmigra- 


1  Mr.  Frank  H.  Gushing,  "My  says,  "Their  belief,  to-day,  however, 
Adventures  in  Zuni,"  in  The  Ceiihity,  relative  to  the  future  life  is  spiritual- 
May  1883,  p.  45  sij.  istic."     But  the  expressions  in  the  text 

-  Mr.     Gushing,    indeed,    while    he  seem   to   leave  no   room   for  doubting 

admits  that   the  ancestors  of  the  Zuni  that  the  transmigration  into  turtles  is  a 

may  have   believed   in  transmigration,  living  article  of  Zuni  faith. 


OF  THE    TURTLE  99 


tion  is  held  by  the  Moqui  Indians,  who  belong  to  the 
same  race  as  the  Zunis.  The  Moquis  are  divided  into 
totem  clans — the  Bear  clan,  Deer  clan.  Wolf  clan, 
Hare  clan,  etc.  ;  they  believe  that  the  ancestors  of  the 
clans  were  bears,  deer,  wolves,  hares,  etc.  ;  and  that  at 
death  the  members  of  each  clan  become  bears,  deer, 
etc.^  The  Zuni  are  also  divided  into  clans,  the  totems 
of  which  agree  closely  with  those  of  the  Moquis,  and 
one  of  their  totems  is  the  turtle."  Thus  their  belief  in 
transmigration  into  the  turtle  is  probably  one  of  the 
regular  articles  of  their  totem  faith.  What  then  is  the 
meaning  of  killing  a  turtle  in  which  the  soul  of  a  kins- 
man is  believed  to  be  present  ?  Apparently  the  object 
is  to  keep  up  a  communication  with  the  other  world  in 
which  the  souls  of  the  departed  are  believed  to  be 
assembled  in  the  form  of  turtles.  It  is  a  common 
belief  that  the  spirits  of  the  dead  return  occasionally  to 
their  old  homes  ;  and  accordingly  the  unseen  visitors 
are  welcomed  and  feasted  by  the  living,  and  then  sent 
upon  their  way.^  In  the  Zuni  ceremony  the  dead  are 
fetched  back  in  the  form  of  turtles,  and  the  killing  of 
the  turtles  is  the  way  of  sending  back  the  souls  to  the 
spirit-land.  Thus  the  general  explanation  given  above 
of  the  custom  of  killing  a  god  seems  inapplicable  to 
the  Zuni  custom,  the  true  meaning  of  which  is  some- 
what obscure. 

Doubt  also  hangs  over  the  meaning  of  the  bear- 
sacrifice    offered    by    the    Ainos,    a    primitive    people 


1  Schoolcraft,  Indian  Tribes,  iv.  86.  3  The  old  Prussian  and  Japanese 
On  the  totem  clans  of  the  Moquis,  see  J.  customs  are  typical.  For  the  former, 
G.  Bourke,  Snake-Dance  of  the  Moquis  see  above,  vol.  i.  p.  177.  For  the 
of  Arizona,  pp.   116  sq.,  334  sqq.  latter,  Charlevoix,  Hiitoire  et  Descrip- 

2  For  this  information  I  am  indebted  tion  generate  dii  Japan,  \.  12S  sq.  Thun- 
to  the  kindness  of  Captain  J.  G.  Bourke,  berg,  Voyages  au  Japan,  etc.  iv.  18  sqq. 
3d.  Cavalry,  U.S.  Army,  author  of  the  A  general  account  of  such  customs  must 
work  mentioned  in  the  preceding  note.  be  reserved  for  another  work. 


A I  NO   SACRIFICE 


who  are  found  in  the  Japanese  islands  of  Yesso  and 
Saghalien,  and  also  in  the  southern  of  the  Kurile 
Islands.  It  is  not  quite  easy  to  make  out  the  attitude 
of  the  Ainos  towards  the  bear.  On  the  one  hand 
they  give  it  the  name  of  Kaimii  or  "  god  "  ;  but 
as  they  apply  the  same  word  to  strangers/  it  probably 
means  no  more  than  a  being  supposed  to  be  endowed 
with  superhuman  powers.  Again,  it  is  said  *'  the  bear 
is  their  chief  divinity  ;  "  ^  "in  the  religion  of  the  Ainos 
the  bear  plays  a  chief  part;"^  "amongst  the  animals 
it  is  especially  the  bear  which  receives  an  idolatrous 
veneration  ;  "  *    "  they  worship   it   after   their   fashion. 

There   is   no  doubt  that  this    wild   beast 

inspires  more  of  the  feeling  which  prompts  worship 
than  the  inanimate  forces  of  nature,  and  the  Ainos 
may  be  distinguished  as  bear  -  worshippers."  ^  Yet, 
on  the  other  hand,  they  kill  the  bear  whenever  they 
can ;  ^  "  the  men  spend  the  autumn,  winter,  and 
spring  in  hunting  deer  and  bears.  Part  of  their 
tribute  or  taxes  is  paid  in  skins,  and  they  subsist 
on  the  dried  meat ; "  ^  bear's  flesh  is  indeed  one  of 
their  staple  foods  ;  they  eat  it  both  fresh  and  salted  ;  ^ 
and  the  skins  of  bears  furnish  them  with  clothing.*' 
In  fact,  the  "  worship  "  of  which  writers  on  this  subject 
speak  appears  to  be  paid  only  to  the  dead  animal. 
Thus,  although  they  kill  a  bear  whenever  they  can, 
"  in     the     process    of    dissecting    the     carcass     they 

'   B.     Scheube,    "  Der    Baerencultus  dicn    iiber    die    Ainos    aiif   der    Insel 

uiid    die     Baerenfeste    der    Ainos,"    in  Yesso,  p.  26. 

MUtheiliingen  der  dctitschen  Gesellschaft  ^  Miss    Bird,     Unbeaten    Tracks     in 

b.  S.  und  S.  Oslasiens  (Yokama),  Heft  Japan  (new  ed.   1S85),  p.  275. 

xxii.  p.  45.  t*   Trans.  Ethnol.  Soc.  I.e. 

2    Traftsactiojts    of  (he    Ethnological  ''   ^iss  Bird,  op.  cit.  p.  269. 

Society,  iv.  36.  ^   Scheube,  Die  Ainos,  p.  4. 

,  „   .       ,             .         ^  ^  Scheube,    "Baerencultus,"  etc.   p. 

•^   Kein,  lapan,  1.  446.  .,     t       ^   ■     1^    1       ji            j    n     ,■ 

'-'  ■'       '       ^^  i^^;  ]o&?,i,\x\  Perhandlii7tgend.  Berliner 

^  II.  von  ^\^o\i.,  Ethnologische  Stu-      Gesell.  f.  Anthropologie,  1882,  p.  188. 


OF  THE  BEAR 


endeavour  to  conciliate  the  deity,  whose  representa- 
tive they  have  slain,  by  making  elaborate  obeisances 
and  deprecatory  salutations  ;  "  ^  "  when  a  bear  is 
trapped  or  wounded  by  an  arrow,  the  hunters  go 
through  an  apologetic  or  propitiatory  ceremony."" 
The  skulls  of  slain  bears  receive  a  place  of  honour 
in  their  huts,  or  are  set  up  on  sacred  posts  outside 
the  huts,  and  are  treated  with  much  respect  ;  libations 
of  sake,  an  intoxicating  liquor,  are  offered  to  them.^ 
The  skulls  of  foxes  are  also  fastened  to  the  sacred 
posts  outside  the  huts  ;  they  are  regarded  as  charms 
against  evil  spirits,  and  are  consulted  as  oracles.'^ 
Yet  it  is  expressly  said,  "  The  live  fox  is  revered 
just  as  little  as  the  bear ;  rather  they  avoid  it  as 
much  as  possible,  considering  it  a  wily  animal."'' 
The  bear  cannot,  therefore,  be  described  as  a  sacred 
animal  of  the  Ainos,  and  it  certainly  is  not  a  totem  ; 
for  they  do  not  call  themselves  bears,  they  appear 
to  have  no  legend  of  their  descent  from  a  bear,*^ 
and  they  kill  and  eat  the  animal  freely. 

But  it  is  the  bear-festival  of  the  Ainos  which  con- 
cerns us  here.  Towards  the  end  of  winter  a  young 
bear  is  caught  and  brought  into  the  village.  At  first 
he  is  suckled  by  an  Aino  woman  ;  afterwards  he  is 
fed  on  fish.  When  he  grows  so  strong  that  he 
threatens  to  break  out  of  the  wooden  cage  in  which 
he  is  confined,  the  feast  is  held.    But  "  it  is  a  peculiarly 

1  Trails.  Ethnol.  Soc.  I.e.  ^  Scheube,  £>/e  Aijios,  p.  i6. 

2  Miss  Bird,  op.  cit.  p.  277. 

3  Scheube,  Die  Ainos,  p.  15  ;  Sie-  ^  Reclus  (Nottvel/e  Geographie  Uni- 
bold,  op.  cit.  p.  26;  Trails.  Ethnol.  z'e;-j-^//t',  vii.  755)  mentions  a  (Japanese?) 
Soc.  I.e.  ;  Rein,  Japan,  i.  447  ;  Von  legend  which  attributes  the  hairiness  of 
Brandt,  "The  Ainos  and  Japanese,"  the  Ainos  to  the  fact  of  their  first 
in  Journ.  Anthrop.  Inst.  iii.  134  ;  ancestor  having  been  suckled  by  a 
Miss  Bird,  op.  cit.  pp.  275,  276.  bear.       But   in    the    absence    of   other 

*  Scheube,  Die  Ainos,  pp.    15,    16  ;      evidence  this  is  no  proof  of  totemism. 
Journ.  Anthrop.  Inst.  iii.  134. 


A I  NO   SACRIFICE 


Striking  fact  that  the  young  bear  is  not  kept  merely  to 
furnish  a  good  meal  ;  rather  he  is  regarded  and 
honoured  as  a  fetish,  or  even  as  a  sort  of  higher 
being."  ^  The  festival  is  generally  celebrated  in 
September  or  October.  Before  it  takes  place  the 
Ainos  apologise  to  their  gods,  alleging  that  they 
have  treated  the  bear  kindly  as  long  as  they  could, 
now  they  can  feed  him  no  longer,  and  are  obliged 
to  kill  him.  A  man  who  gives  a  bear-feast  invites 
his  relations  and  friends  ;  in  a  small  village  nearly 
the  whole  community  takes  part  in  the  feast.  One 
of  these  festivals  has  been  described  by  an  eye- 
witness. Dr.  Scheube.^  On  entering  the  hut  he 
found  about  thirty  Ainos  present,  men,  women,  and 
children,  all  dressed  in  their  best.  The  master  of 
the  house  first  offered  a  libation  on  the  fireplace  to  the 
god  of  the  fire,  and  the  guests  followed  his  example. 
Then  a  libation  was  offered  to  the  house -god  in  his 
sacred  corner  of  the  hut.  Meanwhile  the  housewife, 
who  had  nursed  the  bear,  sat  by  herself,  silent  and 
sad,  bursting  now  and  then  into  tears.  Her  grief 
was  obviously  unaffected,  and  it  deepened  as  the 
festival  went  on.  Next,  the  master  of  the  house 
and  some  of  the  guests  went  out  of  the  hut  and 
offered  libations  before  the  bear's  cage.  A  few 
drops  were  presented  to  the  bear  in  a  saucer,  which 
he  at  once  upset.  Then  the  women  and  girls 
danced  round  the  cage,  their  faces  turned  towards 
it,  their  knees  slightly  bent,  rising  and  hopping  on 
their  toes.  As  they  danced  they  clapped  their  hands 
and  sang  a  monotonous  song.  The  housewife  and 
a  few  old  women,  who  might  have  nursed  many 
bears,  danced   tearfully,  stretching  out  their  arms   to 

1  Rein, ya/ffw,  i.  447.  2  "  Der  Daeiencultus,"  etc.     See  above. 


OF  THE  BEAR  103 


the  bear,  and  addressing  it  in  terms  of  endearment. 
The  young  folks  were  less  affected ;  they  laughed 
as  well  as  sang.  Disturbed  by  the  noise,  the  bear 
began  to  rush  about  his  cage  and  howl  lamentably. 
Next  libations  were  offered  to  the  inabos  or  sacred 
wands  which  stand  outside  of  an  Aino  hut.  These 
wands  are  about  a  couple  of  feet  high,  and  are 
whitded  at  the  top  into  spiral  shavings.^  Five  new 
wands  with  bamboo  leaves  attached  to  them  had 
been  set  up  for  the  festival.  This  is  regularly  done 
when  a  bear  is  killed ;  the  leaves  mean  that  the 
bear  may  come  to  life  again.  Then  the  bear  was 
let  out  of  his  cage,  a  rope  was  thrown  round  his 
neck,  and  he  was  led  about  in  the  neighbourhood 
of  the  hut.  While  this  was  being  done  the  men, 
headed  by  a  chief,  shot  at  the  bear  with  arrows 
tipped  with  wooden  buttons.  Dr.  Scheube  had  to 
do  so  also.  Then  the  bear  was  taken  before  the 
sacred  wands,  a  stick  was  put  in  his  mouth,  nine 
men  knelt  on  him  and  pressed  his  neck  against  a 
beam.  In  five  minutes  the  bear  had  expired  without 
uttering  a  sound.  Meantime  the  women  and  girls 
had  taken  post  behind  the  men,  where  they  danced, 
lamenting,  and  beating  the  men  who  were  killing 
the  bear.  The  bear's  carcass  was  next  placed  on 
a  mat  before  the  sacred  wands  ;  and  a  sword  and 
quiver,  taken  from  the  wands,  were  hung  round  the 
beast's  neck.  Being  a  she -bear,  it  was  also  adorned 
with  a  necklace  and  ear-rings.  Then  food  and  drink 
were  offered  to  it,  in  the  shape  of  millet -broth,  millet- 
cakes,  and  a  pot  of  sake.  The  men  now  sat  down 
on  mats  before  the   dead    bear,   offered   libations    to 

1   Scheube,  "  Baerencultus,"  etc.  p.   46;    id..  Die  Ainos,  p.    15;  Miss  Bird, 

op.    (it.    p.    273   5(7. 


I04  A I  NO  SACRIFICE 


it,  and  drank  deep.  Meanwhile  the  women  and 
girls  had  laid  aside  all  marks  of  sorrow,  and  danced 
merrily,  none  more  merrily  than  the  old  women. 
When  the  mirth  was  at  its  height  two  young  Ainos, 
who  had  let  the  bear  out  of  his  cage,  mounted  the 
roof  of  the  hut  and  threw  cakes  of  millet  amonof 
the  company,  who  all  scrambled  for  them  without 
distinction  of  age  or  sex.  The  bear  was  next  skinned 
and  disembowelled,  and  the  trunk  severed  from  the 
head,  to  which  the  skin  was  left  hanging.  The  blood, 
caught  in  cups,  was  eagerly  swallowed  by  the  men. 
None  of  the  women  or  children  appeared  to  drink 
the  blood,  though  custom  did  not  forbid  them  to 
do  so.  The  liver  was  cut  in  small  pieces  and  eaten 
raw,  with  salt,  the  women  and  children  getting  their 
share.  The  tiesh  and  the  rest  of  the  vitals  were 
taken  into  the  house  to  be  kept  till  the  next  day 
but  one,  and  then  to  be  divided  among_  the  persons 
who  had  been  present  at  the  feast.  Blood  and 
liver  were  offered  to  Dr.  Scheube.  While  the  bear 
was  being  disembowelled,  the  women  and  girls  danced 
the  same  dance  which  they  had  danced  at  the  begin- 
ning—  not,  however,  round  the  cage,  but  in  front 
of  the  sacred  wands.  At  this  dance  the  old  women, 
who  had  been  merry  a  moment  before,  again  shed 
tears  freely.  After  the  brain  had  been  extracted 
from  the  bear's  head  and  swallowed  with  salt,  the 
skull,  detached  from  the  skin,  was  hung  on  a  pole 
beside  the  sacred  wands.  The  stick  with  which 
the  bear  had  been  gagged  was  also  fastened  to  the 
pole,  and  so  were  the  sword  and  quiver  which  had 
been  hung  on  the  carcass.  The  latter  were  removed 
in  about  an  hour,  but  the  rest  remained  standing. 
The  whole  company,  men  and  women,  danced  noisily 


OF  THE  BEAR  105 


before  the  pole  ;  and  another  drinking-bout,  in  which 
the  women  joined,  closed  the  festival. 

The  mode  of  killing  the  bear  is  described  some- 
what differently  by  Miss  Bird,  who,  however,  did 
not  witness  the  ceremony.  She  says  :  "  Yells  and 
shouts  are  used  to  excite  the  bear  ;  and  when  he 
becomes  much  agitated  a  chief  shoots  him  with  an 
arrow,  inflicting  a  slight  wound  which  maddens  him, 
on  which  the  bars  of  the  cage  are  raised,  and 
he  springs  forth,  very  furious.  At  this  stage  the 
Ainos  run  upon  him  with  various  weapons,  each 
one  striving  to  inflict  a  wound,  as  it  brings  good 
luck  to  draw  his  blood.  As  soon  as  he  falls  down 
exhausted  his  head  is  cut  off,  and  the  weapons 
with  which  he  has  been  wounded  are  offered  to  it, 
and  he  is  asked  to  avenge  himself  upon  them."  At 
Usu,  on  Volcano  Bay,  when  the  bear  is  being  killed, 
the  Ainos  shout,  "We  kill  you,  O  bear!  come  back 
soon  into  an  Aino."  ^  A  very  respectable  authority,  Dr. 
Siebold,  states  that  the  bear's  own  heart  is  frequently 
offered  to  the  dead  animal,  in  order  to  assure  him 
that  he  is  still  in  life."^  This,  however,  is  denied  by 
Dr.  Scheube,  who  says  the  heart  is  eaten.^  Perhaps 
the  custom  may  be  observed  in  some  places,  though 
not  in  others. 

The  Gilyaks,  a  Tunguzian  people  of  Eastern 
Siberia,^  hold  a  bear  festival  of  the  same  sort.  "The 
bear  is  the  object  of  the  most  refined  solicitude  of  an 
entire  village  and  plays  the  chief  part  in  their  religious 


1  Miss  Bird,  op.  at.  p.  2']6sq.     Miss  ^   "  Baerencultus,"  etc.  p.  50  note. 
Bird's  information  must  be  received  witli  *  They    inhabit    the    banks    of   the 
caution,  as  there  are  grounds  for  believ-  lower   Amoor   and    the    north   of    Sa- 
ing  that  her  informant  deceived  her.  ghalien.   E.  G.  Ravenstein,  The  Russians 

2  Siebold,    Ethnolog.     Stiidien    iiber  on  the  Amur,  p.  389. 
die  Ainos,  p.  26. 


io6  GILYAK  AND   GOLDI  chap. 

ceremonies."  ^  An  old  she-bear  is  shot  and  her  cub  is 
reared,  but  not  suckled  in  the  village.  When  the  bear 
is  big  enough  he  is  taken  from  his  cage  and  dragged 
through  the  village.  But  first  he  is  led  to  the  bank  of 
the  river,  for  this  is  believed  to  ensure  abundance  of 
fish  to  each  family.  He  is  then  taken  into  every  house 
in  the  village,  where  fish,  brandy,  etc.  are  offered  to 
him.  Some  people  prostrate  themselves  before  the 
beast.  His  entrance  into  a  house  is  supposed  to  bring 
a  blessing  ;  and  if  he  snuffs  at  the  food  offered  to  him, 
this  also  is  a  blessing.  Nevertheless  they  tease  and 
worry,  poke  and  tickle  the  animal  continually,  so  that 
he  is  surly  and  snappish."  After  being  thus  taken 
to  every  house,  he  is  tied  to  a  peg  and  shot  dead  with 
arrows.  His  head  is  then  cut  off,  decked  with  shav- 
ings, and  placed  on  the  table  where  the  feast  is  set  out. 
Here  they  beg  pardon  of  the  beast  and  worship  him. 
Then  his  flesh  is  roasted  and  eaten  in  special  vessels  of 
wood  finely  carved.  They  do  not  eat  the  flesh  raw 
nor  drink  the  blood,  as  the  Ainos  do.  The  brain  and 
entrails  are  eaten  last ;  and  the  skull,  still  decked 
with  shavings,  is  placed  on  a  tree  near  the  house. 
Then  the  people  sing  and  both  sexes  dance  in  ranks, 
as  bears,^ 


1  "Notes  on  the  River  Amur  and  Malayische  Archipel,  p.  59  sq.;  W. 
the  adjacent  districts,"  translated  from  Kodding,  "Die  Batakschen  Gotter,"' 
the  Russian,  Journal  Royal  Geogr.  in  Allgemeiue  Missions-Zeitschrift,  xii. 
Sac.  xxviii.  (1858)  p.  396.  (1885)  478  sq.;  Neumann,  "Het  Pane- 

2  Compare  the  custom  of  pinching  the  en  Liila-stroomgebied  op  het  eiland 
frog  before  cutting  off  his  head,  above  Sumatra,"  in  Tijdschrift  v.  h.  Nederl. 
vol.  i.  p.  93.  In  Japan  sorceresses  Aardrijks  Genootsch.  ii.  series,  dl.  iii. 
bury  a  dog  in  the  earth,  tease  him,  Afdeeling  :  meer  uitgebreide  artikelen, 
then  cut  off  his  head  and  put  it  in  a  No.  2,  p.  306. 

box  to  be  used  in  magic.      Bastian,  Die  3  \v,  Joest,  in  Scheube,  Die  Aiiws, 

Cultiirldnder  des  alien  A/nerika,\.  475  p.  17;  Revue d'EtIuiographie,\\.  ■^o']  sq. 

note,   who   adds   '■' ivie  im  ostindischett  (on  the  authority  of  Mr.  Seeland);   /«- 

Archipelago  die ScJuttzseele gereizt  wird.^''  tcrnationales  Anhiv  fiir  Ethnologie,  i. 

He  probably  refers  to  the  Batta  Pang-  102     (on    the    authority    of    Captain 

hulu- baking.       See    Rosenberg,    Der  Jacobsen).      What  exactly  is  meant  by 


SACRIFICE   OF  THE  BEAR  107 


The  Goldi,  neighbours  of  the  Gilyaks,  treat  the 
bear  In  much  the  same  way.  They  hunt  and  kill  it ; 
but  sometimes  they  capture  a  live  bear  and  keep  him 
in  a  cage,  feeding  him  well  and  calling  him  their  son 
and  brother.  Then  at  a  great  festival  he  is  taken 
from  his  cage,  paraded  about  with  marked  considera- 
tion, and  afterwards  killed  and  eaten.  "  The  skull, 
jaw-bones,  and  ears  are  then  suspended  on  a  tree,  as 
an  antidote  against  evil  spirits  ;  but  the  flesh  is  eaten 
and  much  relished,  for  they  believe  that  all  who  par- 
take of  it  acquire  a  zest  for  the  chase,  and  become 
courageous."  ^ 

In  the  treatment  of  the  captive  bear  by  these 
tribes  there  are  features  which  can  hardly  be  distin- 
guished from  worship.  Such  in  particular  is  the 
Gilyak  custom  of  leading  him  from  house  to  house, 
that  every  family  may  receive  his  blessing — a  custom 
parallel  to  the  European  one  of  taking  a  May-tree  or 
a  personal  representative  of  the  tree-spirit  from  door 
to  door  in  spring,  in  order  that  all  may  share  the  fresh 
energies  of  reviving  nature.  Again  the  expected 
resurrection  of  the  bear  is  avowedly  indicated  by  the 
bamboo  leaves  and  by  the  prayer  addressed  to  him  to 
"  come  back  soon  into  an  Aino."  And  that  the  eating 
of  his  flesh  is  regarded  as  a  sacrament  is  made 
probable  by  the  Gilyak  custom  of  reserving  special 
vessels  to  hold  the  bear's  flesh  on  this  solemn  occasion. 
How  is  the  reverence  thus  paid  to  particular  bears  to 
be  reconciled  with  the  fact  that  bears  in  general  are 
habitually  hunted  and  killed  by  these  tribes  for  the 
sake  of  their  flesh  and  skins  ?     On  the  one  hand,  the 

"dancing  as    bears"    {'<■  tanzen    beide  Amur,   p.    379  sq.;  T.   W.   Atkinson, 

Geschlechter  Reigentiinze,  wu  Bdren,'"  Travels  in  the  Regions  of  the  Upper  and 

Joest,  I.e.)  does  not  appear.  Lower  Amoor  (London,  i860),  p.  482 

1  Ravenstein,    The  Russians  on   the  sq. 


ro8  RELUCTANCE   OF  SAVAGE  chap. 

bear  is  treated  as  a  god ;  on  the  other  hand,  as  a 
creature  wholly  subservient  to  human  needs.  The 
apparent  contradiction  vanishes  when  we  place  our- 
selves at  the  savage  point  of  view.  The  savage,  we 
must  remember,  believes  that  animals  are  endowed 
with  feelings  and  intelligence  like  those  of  men,  and 
that,  like  men,  they  possess  souls  which  survive  the 
death  of  their  bodies  either  to  wander  about  as 
disembodied  spirits  or  to  be  born  again  in  animal 
form.  To  the  savage,  therefore,  who  regards  all 
living  creatures  as  practically  on  a  footing  of  equality 
with  man/  the  act  of  killing  and  eating  an  animal  must 
wear  a  very  different  aspect  from  that  which  the  same 
act  presents  to  us  who  regard  the  intelligence  of 
animals  as  far  inferior  to  our  own  and  deny  them  the 
possession  of  immortal  souls.  Thus  on  the  principles 
of  his  rude  philosophy  the  savage  who  slays  an  animal 
believes  himself  exposed  to  the  vengeance  either  of 
its  disembodied  spirit  or  of  all  the  other  animals  of  the 
same  species,  whom  he  considers  as  knit  together,  like 
men,  by  the  ties  of  kin  and  the  obligations  of  the  blood 
feud,  and  therefore  as  bound  to  resent  the  injury  done 
to  one  of  their  number.  Accordingly  the  savage 
makes  it  a  rule  to  spare  the  life  of  those  animals  which 
he  has  no  pressing  motive  for  killing,  at  least  such 
fierce  and  dangerous  animals  as  are  likely  to  exact  a 
bloody  vengeance  for  the  slaughter  of  one  of  their 
kind.  Crocodiles  are  animals  of  this  sort.  They  are 
only  found  in  hot  countries  where,  as  a  rule,  food  is 

1   A    Bushman,    questioned     by    the  being  a  Narrative  of  a  Second  Journey 

Rev.  Mr.   Campbell,    "could  not  state  in  the  Interior  of  that  Country,  ii.  34. 

any   difference   between   a  man  and   a  When  the  Russians  first  landed  on  one 

brute — he  did  not  know  but  a  buffalo  of  the  Alaskan  islands  the  people  took 

might  shoot  with  bows  and  arrows  as  them    for   cuttle-fish,    "on  account  of 

well  as  a  man,  if  it  had  them."     John  the  buttons  on  their  clothes."     Petroff, 

Campbell,     IVave/s    in    South    Africa,  Alaska,  p.   145. 


Ill  TO  SLAY  WILD  BEASTS  109 

abundant  and  primitive  man  has  therefore  no  reason  to 
kill  them  for  the  sake  of  their  tough  and  unpalatable 
flesh.      Hence  it  is  a  general  rule  among  savages  to 
spare     crocodiles,    or     rather    only    to    kill    them    in 
obedience    to    the    law    of  blood    feud,    that    is,   as    a 
retaliation  for  the  slaughter  of  men  by  crocodiles.     For 
example,  the  Dyaks  of  Borneo  will  not  kill  a  crocodile 
unless  a  crocodile  has  first  killed  a  man.      "  For  why, 
say  they,   should  they   commit  an   act  of  aggression, 
when  he  and  his  kindred   can  so  easily  repay  them  ? 
But  should  the  alligator  take  a  human  life,    revenge 
becomes  a  sacred  duty  of  the  living  relatives,  who  will 
trap  the  man-eater  in  the  spirit  of  an  officer  of  justice 
pursuing  a   criminal.      Others,  even  then,  hang  back, 
reluctant  to   embroil    themselves    in   a   quarrel   which 
does  not  concern  them.     The  man-eating  alligator  is 
supposed  to  be  pursued  by  a  righteous  Nemesis  ;  and 
whenever  one  is  caught  they  have  a  profound  convic- 
tion that  it  must  be  the  guilty  one,  or  his  accomplice."^ 
So  the   natives  of  Madagascar  never  kill  a  crocodile 
"  except  in  retaliation  for  one  of  their  friends  who  has 
been  destroyed  by  a  crocodile.     They  believe  that  the 
wanton   destruction   of   one    of  these  reptiles  will  be 
followed  by  the  loss  of  human  life,  in  accordance  with 
the  principle  of  lex  talio7iis.''      The  people  who  live 
near    the    lake    Itasy    in   Madagascar   make   a  yearly 
proclamation  to  the  crocodiles,  announcing  that  they 
will   revenge   the  death   of  some  of  their  friends    by 
killing  as  many  crocodiles  in  return  and  warning  all 


1  Rev.     J.     Perham,     "Sea    Dyak  voor  Neirland's  Indie,     1846,    dl.    iii. 

V^eWgvon,"  Journal  of  the  Straits  Branch  i6o;    S.    Miiller,    Reizen  en  onderzoe- 

of  the  Royal  Asiatic  Society,  lAo.  10,  p.  kitigen   in  den   Indischen   Archipel,    i. 

221.       Cp.     C.     Hupe,    "  Korte    ver-  238;     Perelaer,    Ethnographische    Be- 

handeling    over    de   godsdienst    zeden,  schrijving  der  Dayaks,  p.  7. 
enz.    der    Dajakkers,"    in     Tijdschrift 


no  PROPITIATION  OF  chap. 

well-disposed  crocodiles  to  keep  out  of  the  way,  as 
they  have  no  quarrel  with  them,  but  only  with  their 
evil-minded  relations  who  have  taken  human  life.^ 
The  Foulahs  of  Senegambia  respect  crocodiles  on 
similar  grounds.^  The  Seminoles,  Sioux,  and  Iowa 
Indians  of  North  America  spare  the  rattle-snake 
because  they  fear  that  the  ghost  of  the  dead  rattle- 
snake would  incite  its  kinsfolk  to  take  vengeance.^ 
No  consideration  will  induce  a  Sumatran  to  catch  or 
wound  a  tiger  except  in  self-defence  or  immediately 
after  the  tiger  has  destroyed  a  friend  or  relation. 
When  a  European  has  set  traps  for  tigers,  the  people 
of  the  neighbourhood  have  been  known  to  go  by  night 
to  the  place  and  explain  to  the  tiger  that  the  traps  are 
not  set  by  them  nor  with  their  consent.^ 

But  the  savage  clearly  cannot  afford  to  spare  all 
animals.  He  must  either  eat  some  of  them  or  starve, 
and  when  the  question  thus  comes  to  be  whether  he  or 
the  animal  must  perish,  he  is  forced  to  overcome  his 
superstitious  scruples  and  take  the  life  of  the  beast. 
At  the  same  time  he  does  all  he  can  to  appease  his 
victims  and  their  kinsfolk.  Even  in  the  act  of  killing 
them  he  testifies  his  respect  for  them,  endeavours  to 
excuse  or  even  conceal  his  share  in  procuring  their 
death,  and  promises  that  their  remains  will  be  honour- 
ably treated.  By  thus  robbing  death  of  its  terrors  he 
hopes  to  reconcile  his  victims  to  their  fate  and  to 
induce  their  fellows  to  come  and  be  killed  also.  For 
example,  it  was  a  principle  with  the  Kamtchatkans 
never  to  kill  a  land  or  sea  animal  without  first  making 
excuses  to  it  and  begging  that  the  animal  would  not 

1  Sibree,  The  Great  African  Island,  3  Bastian,    Die    Volker  des  dstlichen 

p-  269.  Asien,  v.  65. 

^  Kaffenel,     V'oyage   dans    rAfrique  *  Marsden,   History  of  Sumatra,  p. 

Occidentale  (Paris,  1846),  p.  84  sq.  292. 


Ill  SLAUGHTERED  BEARS  in 

take  it  ill.  Also  they  offered  it  cedar-nuts,  etc.  to 
make  it  think  that  it  was  not  a  victim  but  a  guest  at  a 
feast.  They  believed  that  this  prevented  other  animals 
of  the  same  species  from  growing  shy.  For  instance, 
after  they  had  killed  a  bear  and  feasted  on  its  flesh,  the 
host  would  bring  the  bear's  head  before  the  company, 
wrap  it  in  grass,  and  present  it  with  a  variety  of  trifles. 
Then  he  would  lay  the  blame  of  the  bear's  death  on 
the  Russians,  and  bid  the  beast  wreak  his  wrath  upon 
them.  Also  he  would  ask  the  bear  to  tell  the  other 
bears  how  well  he  had  been  treated,  that  they  too 
might  come  without  fear.  Seals,  sea-lions,  and  other 
animals  were  treated  by  the  Kamtchatkans  with  the 
same  ceremonious  respect.^  When  the  Ostiaks  have 
hunted  and  killed  a  bear,  they  cut  off  its  head  and 
hang  it  on  a  tree.  Then  they  gather  round  in  a  circle 
and  pay  it  divine  honours.  Next  they  run  towards 
the  carcass  uttering  lamentations  and  saying,  "  Who 
killed  you  ?  It  was  the  Russians.  Who  cut  off  your 
head?  It  was  a  Russian  axe.  Who  skinned  you? 
It  was  a  knife  made  by  a  Russian."  They  explain, 
too,  that  the  feathers  which  sped  the  arrow  on  its 
flight  came  from  the  wing  of  a  strange  bird,  and  that 
they  did  nothing  but  let  the  arrow  go.  They  do  all 
this  because  they  believe  that  the  wandering  ghost  of 
the  slain  bear  would  attack  them  on  the  first  oppor- 
tunity, if  they  did  not  thus  appease  it.^  Or  they  stuff 
the  skin  of  the  slain  bear  with  hay  ;  and  after  cele- 
brating their  victory  with  songs  of  mockery  and  insult, 
after  spitting  on  and  kicking  it,  they  set  it  up  on  its 
hind  legs,   "and  then,   for  a  considerable  time,   they 

1  Steller,     Beschreibiing     von     dem  durch      verschiedene      Provhizen      des 
Lande  Kafiitschatka,  TpV-  ^^'^1  ^Z'^-  russischen     Reichs,    iii.    64;     Georgi, 

2  Voyages    au    Nord     (Amsterdam,  Beschreibiing  aller  Nationeti  des  rttssi- 
\T2.']),    viii,    41,    416;    Pallas,    Reise  schen  Reichs,  -p.  i'^. 


PROPITIATION  OF 


bestow  on  it  all  the  veneration  due  to  a  guardian 
god."^  When  a  party  of  Koriaks  have  killed  a  bear 
or  a  wolf,  they  skin  the  beast  and  dress  one  of  them- 
selves in  the  skin.  Then  they  dance  round  the  skin- 
clad  man,  saying  that  it  was  not  they  who  killed  the 
animal,  but  some  one  else,  generally  a  Russian.  When 
they  kill  a  fox  they  skin  it,  wrap  the  body  in  grass, 
and  bid  him  go  tell  his  companions  how  hospitably  he 
has  been  received,  and  how  he  has  received  a  new 
cloak  instead  of  his  old  one.^  The  Finns  used  to  try  to 
persuade  a  slain  bear  that  he  had  not  been  killed  by 
them,  but  had  fallen  from  a  tree,  etc.^  When  the 
Lapps  had  succeeded  in  killing  a  bear  with  impunity, 
they  thanked  him  for  not  hurting  them  and  for  not 
breaking  the  clubs  and  spears  which  had  given  him 
his  death  wounds  ;  and  they  prayed  that  he  would  not 
visit  his  death  upon  them  by  sending  storms  or  in  any 
other  way.*     His  flesh  then  furnished  a  feast. 

The  reverence  of  hunters  for  the  bear  whom  they 
regularly  kill  and  eat  may  thus  be  traced  all  along  the 
northern  region  of  the  Old  World,  from  Behring's 
Straits  to  Lappland.  It  reappears  in  similar  forms  in 
North  America.  With  the  American  Indians  a  bear 
hunt  was  an  important  event  for  which  they  prepared 
by  long  fasts  and  purgations.  Before  setting  out  they 
offered  expiatory  sacrifices  to  the  souls  of  bears  slain 
in  previous  hunts,  and  besought  them  to  be  favourable 
to  the  hunters.     When  a  bear  was  killed  the  hunter 


1  Erman,  Travels  in  Sibe7-ia,  ii.  43.  *  Scheffer,  Lapponia  (Frankfort, 
For  the  veneration  of  the  polar  bear  by  1673),  p.  233  sq.  The  Lapps  "have 
the  Samoyedes,  who  nevertheless  kill  still  an  elaborate  ceremony  in  hunting 
and  eat  it,  see  ib.  54  sq.  the  bear.      They  pray  and  chant  to  his 

2  P^astian     Der  Meiisch  in   der  Ge-  "^""^^^^^   ^"'^    ^^"^  ^^^^^'"'^1   ^^X^  worship 
,  .  ,^     •■•  '   ^  before  eating  it."     E.  Rae,   The  White 

schtchte,  m.  26.  c         d     •       /      /t       1             co   » 

Sea    Fcmnsula    (London,     1601),    p. 

3  Max  Buch,  Die  Wotjdken,  p.  139.  276. 


Ill  SLAUGHTERED  BEARS  113 

lit  his  pipe,  and  putting  the  mouth  of  it  between  the 
bear's  Hps,  blew  into  the  bowl,  filling  the  beast's  mouth 
with  smoke.  Then  he  begged  the  bear  not  to  be 
angry  at  having  been  killed,  and  not  to  thwart  him 
afterwards  in  the  chase.  The  carcass  was  roasted 
whole  and  eaten  ;  not  a  morsel  of  the  flesh  might  be 
left  over.  The  head,  painted  red  and  blue,  was  hung 
on  a  post  and  addressed  by  orators,  who  heaped  praise 
on  the  dead  beast.^  When  men  of  the  Bear  clan  in 
the  Otawa  tribe  killed  a  bear,  they  made  him  a  feast 
of  his  own  flesh,  and  addressed  him  thus:  "Cherish 
us  no  grudge  because  we  have  killed  you.  You  have 
sense ;  you  see  that  our  children  are  hungry.  They 
love  you  and  wish  to  take  you  into  their  bodies.  Is  it 
not  glorious  to  be  eaten  by  the  children  of  a  chief  ?"^ 
Amongst  the  Nootka  Indians  of  British  Columbia, 
when  a  bear  had  been  killed,  it  was  brought  in  and 
seated  before  the  head  chief  in  an  upright  posture, 
with  a  chiefs  bonnet,  wrought  in  figures,  on  its  head, 
and  Its  fur  powdered  over  with  white  down.  A  tray 
of  provisions  was  then  set  before  it,  and  it  was  invited 
by  words  and  gestures  to  eat.  The  animal  was  then 
skinned,  boiled,  and  eaten. ^ 

A  like  respect  Is  testified  for  other  dangerous 
animals  by  the  hunters  who  regularly  trap  and  kill 
them.  When  Kafir  hunters  are  in  the  act  of  showering 
spears  on  an  elephant,  they  call  out,  "  Don't  kill  us, 

1  Charlevoix,  Histoire  de  la  Noiivelle      of  the  Hare,  Carp,  and   Bear  clans,  to 
France,    v.    173    sq.;    Chateaubriand,      which  may  be  added  the  Gull  clan,  as 

Voyage    en    Amerique,    pp.     172- 181  I     learn    from     an    extract    from    The 

(Paris,  Michel  Levy,  1870).  Canadian  Journal  (Torowio)  for  March 

2  Lettres   edijiantes  et   curicuses,    vi.  1858,    quoted    in    the    Academy,    27th 
171.      Morgan  states  that  the  names  of  September  1884,  p.  203. 

the    Otav^ra  totem   clans  had  not  been  ^  ^  Narrative  of  the  Adventures  and 

obtained    {Ancient    Society,    p.     167).  Sufferings  of  John  T.  Jewitt,  p.    117 

From   the   Lettres  edif  antes,    vi.    168-  (Middletown,    1 820),    p.     1 33     (Edin- 

171,  he  might  have  learned  the  names  burgh,  1824). 

VOL.   II  I 


114  PROPITIATION  OF  chap. 

great  captain  ;  don't  strike  or  tread  upon  us,  mighty 
chief." ^  When  he  is  dead  they  make  their  excuses  to 
him,  pretending  that  his  death  was  a  pure  accident. 
As  a  mark  of  respect  they  bury  his  trunk  with  much 
solemn  ceremony  ;  for  they  say  that  "  The  elephant  is 
a  great  lord  ;  his  trunk  is  his  hand."^  Amongst  some 
tribes  of  Eastern  Africa,  when  a  lion  is  killed,  the  car- 
cass is  brought  before  the  king,  who  does  homage  to 
it  by  prostrating  himself  on  the  ground  and  rubbing 
his  face  on  the  muzzle  of  the  beast. ^  In  some  parts  of 
Western  Africa  if  a  negro  kills  a  leopard  he  is  bound 
fast  and  brought  before  the  chiefs  for  having  killed 
one  of  their  peers.  The  man  defends  himself  on  the 
plea  that  the  leopard  is  chief  of  the  forest  and  therefore 
a  stranger.  He  is  then  set  at  liberty  and  rewarded. 
But  the  dead  leopard,  adorned  with  a  chiefs  bonnet, 
is  set  up  in  the  village,  where  nightly  dances  are  held 
in  its  honour.*  "  Before  leaving  a  temporary  camp  in 
the  forest,  where  they  have  killed  a  tapir  and  dried 
the  meat  on  a  babracot,  Indians  [of  Guiana]  invariably 
destroy  this  babracot,  saying  that  should  a  tapir  passing 
that  way  find  traces  of  the  slaughter  of  one  of  his  kind, 
he  would  come  by  night  on  the  next  occasion  when 
Indians  slept  at  that  place,  and,  taking  a  man,  would 
babracot  him  in  revenge."^ 

But  it  is  not  merely  dangerous  animals  with  whom 
the  savage  desires  to  keep  on  good  terms.  It  is  true 
that  the  respect  which  he  pays  to  wild  beasts  is  in  some 

1  Stephen    Kay,     Travels   and    Re-      burial  of  the  trunk  is  also  mentioned  by 
searches  in   Caffraria  (London,  1833),      Kay,  I.e. 

p.  138.  ^  Jerome  Becker,  La  Vie  en  Afrique 

2  Alberti,  De  Kaffers  aan  de  Zuid-      (Paris  and  Brussels,  1S87),  ii.  298  sq. 
kust  van  Afrika  (Amsterdam,    18 10),      305. 

p.  95.    Alberti's  information  is  repeated  *  Bastian,   Die  detitsche  Expedition 

by  Lichtenstein   {Reisen   im  siidlichen  an  der  Loango-A'iiste,  ii.  243. 

Afrika,   i.    412),  and   by   Rose  [Four  ^  Im  Thurn,  Atnong  the  Indians  of 

Years  in  Southern  Afr-iea, ■p.  ii)<)).    The  G7tiana,  -p.  352. 


SLAUGHTERED  ANIMALS  115 


measure  proportioned  to  their  strength  and  ferocity. 
Thus  the  savage  Stiens  of  Cambodia,  beheving  that 
all  animals  have  souls  which  roam  about  after  their 
death,  beg  an  animal's  pardon  when  they  kill  it,  lest  its 
soul  should  come  and  torment  them.  Also  they  offer 
it  sacrifices,  but  these  sacrifices  are  proportioned  to 
the  size  and  strength  of  the  animal.  The  ceremonies 
observed  at  the  death  of  an  elephant  are  conducted 
with  much  pomp  and  last  seven  days.^  Similar  dis- 
tinctions are  drawn  by  North  American  Indians. 
"The  bear,  the  buffalo,  and  the  beaver  are  manidos 
[divinities]  which  furnish  food.  The  bear  is  formidable, 
and  good  to  eat.  They  render  ceremonies  to  him, 
beo-ainp-  him  to  allow  himself  to  be  eaten,  although 
they  know  he  has  no  fancy  for  it.  We  kill  you,  but 
you  are  not  annihilated.  Hi*  head  and  paws  are 
objects  of  homage.  .  .  .  Other  animals  are  treated 
similarly  from  similar  reasons.  .  .  .  Many  of  the 
animal  manidos,  not  being  dangerous,  are  often  treated 
with  contempt — the  terrapin,  the  weasel,  polecat,  etc."^ 
The  distinction  is  instructive.  Animals  which  are 
feared,  or  -are  good  to  eat,  or  both,  are  treated  with 
ceremonious  respect ;  those  which  are  neither  formid- 
able nor  good  to  eat  are  despised.  We  have  had 
examples  of  reverence  paid  to  animals  which  are  both 
feared  and  eaten.  It  remains  to  prove  that  similar 
respect  is  shown  for  animals  which,  without  being 
feared,  are  either  eaten  or  valued  for  their  skins. 

When  Siberian  sable-hunters  have  caught  a  sable, 
no  one  is  allowed  to  see  it,  and  they  think  that  if  good 
or  evil  be  spoken  of  the  captured  sable,  no  more  sables 


1  Mouhot,     Travels    in  the    Central  ^  Schoolcraft,     Indian     Tribes,     v. 

Parts  of  Indo- China,  i.   252  ;    Moura,       420. 
Le  Royatime  dii  Cainbodge,  i.  422.  ^ 


ii6  PROPITIATION  OF  chap. 

will  be  caught.     A  hunter  has  been  known  to  express 
his  belief  that  the  sables  could  hear  what  was  said 
of  them  as  far  off  as  Moscow.      He  said  that  the  chief 
reason  why  the  sable  hunt  was  now  so  unproductive 
was  that  some  live  sables  had  been  sent  to  Moscow. 
There  they  had   been   viewed   with    astonishment  as 
strange  animals,   and    the   sables    cannot   abide   that. 
Another,  though  minor,  cause  of  the  diminished  take  of 
sable  was,  he  alleged,   that  the   world   is   now   much 
worse  than  it  used  to  be,  so  that  nowadays  a  hunter 
will  sometimes  hide  the  sable  which  he  has  got  instead 
of  putting  it  into  the  common  stock.     This  also,  said 
he,  the  sables  cannot  abide.^     Alaskan  hunters  preserve 
the  bones  of  sables  and  beavers  out  of  reach  of  the 
dogs  for  a  year  and  then  bury  them  carefully,  "  lest  the 
spirits  who  look  after  the  beavers  and  sables  should 
consider  that  they  are  regarded  with  contempt,  and 
hence  no  more  should  be  killed  or  trapped.""     The 
Canadian   Indians  were  equally  particular  not  to  let 
their  dogs  gnaw  the  bones,  or  at  least  certain  of  the 
bones,  of  beavers.     They  took  the  greatest  pains  to 
collect  and  preserve  these  bones  and,  when  the  beaver 
had  been  caught  in  a  net,  they  threw  them  into  the  river. 
To  a  Jesuit  who  argued  that  the  beavers  could   not 
possibly  know  what  became  of  their  bones,  the  Indians 
replied,  "  You   know   nothing  about  catching  beavers 
and   yet  you  will    be  talking   about  it.      Before    the 
beaver  is  stone  dead,  his  soul  takes  a  turn  in  the  hut 
of  the  man  who  is  killing  him  and  makes  a  careful  note 
of  what   is  done  with   his   bones.       If  the  bones  are 
given  to  the  dogs,  the  other  beavers  would  get  word  of 
it  and  would  not  let  themselves  be  caught.     Whereas, 

1  J.  G.  Gmelin,  Reise  dtirch  Sibirien,  -  W.  Dall,  Alaska  and  its  Resources, 

ii.  278.  p.  89. 


Ill  SLAUGHTERED  ANIMALS  \\^ 

if  their  bones  are  thrown  into  the  fire  or  a  river,  they 
are  quite  satisfied  ;  and  it  is  particularly  gratifying  to 
the  net  which  caught  them."^  Before  hunting  the 
beaver  they  offered  a  solemn  prayer  to  the  Great 
Beaver,  and  presented  him  with  tobacco;  and  when  the 
chase  was  over,  an  orator  pronounced  a  funeral  oration 
over  the  dead  beavers.  He  praised  their  spirit  and 
wisdom.  "You  will  hear  no  more,"  said  he,  "the  voice 
of  the  chieftains  who  commanded  you  and  whom  you 
chose  from  among  all  the  warrior  beavers  to  give  you 
laws.  Your  language,  which  the  medicine-men  under- 
stand perfectly,  will  be  heard  no  more  at  the  bottom 
of  the  lake.  You  will  fight  no  more  battles  with  the 
otters,  your  cruel  foes.  No,  beavers !  But  your  skins 
shall  serve  to  buy  arms  ;  we  will  carry  your  smoked 
hams  to  our  children  ;  we  will  keep  the  dogs  from 
eating  your  bones,  which  are  so  hard."  ^ 

The  elan,  deer,  and  elk  were  treated  by  the  North 
American  Indians  with  the  same  punctilious  respect, 
and  for  the  same  reason.  Their  bones  might  not 
be  given  to  the  dogs  nor  thrown  into  the  fire,  nor 
might  their  fat  be  dropped  upon  the  fire,  because  the 
souls  of  the  dead  animals  were  believed  to  see  what 
was  done  to  their  bodies  and  to  tell  it  to  the  other 
beasts,  living  and  dead.  Hence,  if  their  bodies  were 
ill  used,  the  animals  of  that  species  would  not  allow 


1  Relations  des  Jesintes,  1634,  p.  24,  Nouvelle    France,    v.    225  ;     Chateau- 

ed.    1858.      Nets  are  regarded   by  the  briand,    Voyage  en    Aincriqiie,   p.    140 

Indians  as  living  creatures  who  not  only  sqq. 

think  and  feel  but  also  eat,  speak,  and  ^  Chateaubriand,  Voyage  en  Aineri- 

marry  wives.    '&z.^?ixA,  Le  Grand  Voyage  que,  pp.  175,  178.      They  will  not  let 

du  Pays  des  Hiirons,  p.  256  (p.  178  sq.  the  blood  of  beavers  fall  on  the  ground, 

of  the   Paris  reprint,    Librairie   Tross,  or  their  luck  in  hunting  them  would  be 

1865)  ;    S.     Hearne,    Journey    to    the  gone.      Relations  des  Jestdtes,  1633,  p. 

Northern  Oceaii,  p.  329  sq.;  Relations  21.       Compare     the    rule     about    not 

des  Jesuites,    1636,   p.   109;  ib.    1639,  allowing  the  blood  of  kings  to  fall  on 

p.     95;    Charlevoix,     Histoire    de    la  the  ground,  above,  vol.  i.  p.  i']^  sqq. 


1 1 8  PROPITIA  TION 


themselves  to  be  taken,  neither  in  this  world  nor  in  the 
world  to  come.^  A  sick  man  would  be  asked  by  the 
medicine-man  whether  he  had  not  thrown  away  some 
of  the  flesh  of  the  deer  or  turtle,  and  if  he  answered 
yes,  the  medicine-man  would  say,  "That  is  what  is 
killing  you.  The  soul  of  the  deer  or  turtle  has  entered 
into  your  body  to  avenge  the  wrong  you  did  it."^ 
The  Sioux  will  not  stick  an  awl  or  needle  into  a  turtle, 
for  they  are  sure  that,  if  they  were  to  do  so,  the  turtle 
would  punish  them  at  some  future  time.^  The 
Canadian  Indians  would  not  eat  the  embryos  of  the 
elk,  unless  at  the  close  of  the  hunting  season  ;  other- 
wise the  mother -elks  would  be  shy  and  refuse  to  be 
caught.^  Some  of  the  Indians  believed  that  each  sort 
of  animal  had  its  patron  or  genius  who  watched  over 
and  preserved  it.  An  Indian  girl  having  once  picked 
up  a  dead  mouse,  her  father  snatched  the  little  creature 
from  her  and  tenderly  caressed  and  fondled  it.  Being 
asked  why  he  did  so,  he  said  that  it  was  to  appease  the 
genius  of  mice,  in  order  that  he  might  not  torment  his 
daughter  for  eating  the  mouse.  With  that  he  handed 
the  mouse  to  the  girl  and  she  ate  it.  ^ 

For  like  reasons,  a  tribe  which  depends  for  its 
subsistence,  chiefly  or  in  part,  upon  fishing  is  careful 
to  treat  the  fish  with  every  mark  of  honour  and  respect. 
The  Indians  of  Peru  "adored  the  fish  that  they 
caught  in  greatest  abundance  ;  for  they  said  that  the 
first  fish  that  was  made  in  the  world  above  (for  so  they 

^  Hennepin,   Noiiveau   voyage  dhm  the   chase,   lest   any  should   escape   to 

pais  plus  grand  que  PEtirope  (Utrecht,  warn  their  fellows  (Sagard,  I.e.) 

1698),  p.  \\isq.;  Relations  des  Jhtiites,  ^  Lett  res  edifiantes  et  curieuses,  viii. 

1636,  p.  109;  Sagard,  Le  Grand  Voyage  339. 

dii  Pays  des  Hurons,  p.  255  (p.  178  of  3  Schoolcraft,  Indian  Tribes,  iii.  230. 

the    Paris    reprint).       Not    quite    con-  ■*  Relations  des  Jesuites,  1634,  p.  26. 

sistently  the  Canadian  Indians  used  to  ^  Charlevoix,  Histoire  de  la  Nouvelle 

kill  every  elan  they  could  overtake  in  France,  v.  443. 


OF  THE  FISH  119 


named  Heaven)  gave  birth  to  all  other  fish  of  that 
species,  and  took  care  to  send  them  plenty  of  its 
children  to  sustain  their  tribe.  For  this  reason  they 
worshipped  sardines  in  one  region,  where  they  killed 
more  of  them  than  of  any  other  fish  ;  in  others,  the 
skate  ;  in  others,  the  dogfish  ;  in  others,  the  golden 
fish  for  its  beauty  ;  in  others,  the  crawfish  ;  in  others, 
for  want  of  larger  gods,  the  crabs,  where  they  had  no 
other  fish,  or  where  they  knew  not  how  to  catch  and 
kill  them.  In  short,  they  had  whatever  fish  was  most 
serviceable  to  them  as  their  gods,"^  The  Otawa 
Indians  of  Canada,  believing  that  the  souls  of  dead 
fish  passed  into  other  bodies  of  fish,  never  burned 
fish  bones,  for  fear  of  displeasing  the  souls  of  the  fish, 
who  would  come  no  more  to  the  nets.^  The  Hurons 
also  refrained  from  throwing  fish  bones  into  the  fire, 
lest  the  souls  of  the  fish  should  go  and  warn  the  other 
fish  not  to  let  themselves  be  caught,  since  the  Hurons 
would  burn  their  bones.  Moreover,  they  had  men 
who  preached  to  the  fish  and  persuaded  them  to  come 
and  be  caught.  A  good  preacher  was  much  sought 
after,  for  they  thought  that  the  exhortations  of  a  clever 
man  had  a  great  effect  in  drawing  the  fish  to  the 
nets.  In  the  Huron  fishing  village  where  the  French 
missionary  Sagard  stayed,  the  preacher  to  the  fish 
prided  himself  very  much  on  his  eloquence,  which 
was  of  a  florid  order.  Every  evening  after  supper, 
having  seen  that  all  the  people  were  in  their  places 
and  that  a  strict  silence  was  observed,  he  preached 
to  the  fish.  His  text  was  that  the  Hurons  did  not 
burn    fish    bones.       "  Then    enlarging   on    his    theme 


1  Garcilasso  de  la  Vega,  Royal  Com-      Society.      Cp.  id.,  ii.  p.  148. 
mentaries  of  the  Yncas,  First  Part,  bk.  ^  Relations   des  /estates,    1667,    p. 

i.   ch.    10,  vol.   i.   p.    49  sq.,  Hakluyt       12. 


PROPITIA  TION 


with  extraordinary  unction,  he  exhorted  and  conjured 
and  invited  and  implored  the  fish  to  come  and  be 
caught  and  to  be  of  good  courage  and  to  fear  nothing, 
for  it  was  all  to  serve  their  friends  who  honoured  them 
and  did  not  burn  their  bones." ^  The  disappearance 
of  herring  from  the  sea  about  Heligoland  in  1530  was 
attributed  by  the  fishermen  to  the  fact  that  two  lads 
had  whipped  a  freshly -caught  herring  and  then  flung 
it  back  into  the  sea.^  The  natives  of  the  Duke  of 
York  Island  annually  decorate  a  canoe  with  flowers 
and  ferns,  lade  it,  or  are  supposed  to  lade  it,  with 
shell-money,  and  set  it  adrift  to  pay  the  fish  for  those 
they  lose  by  being  caught.^  It  is  especially  necessary 
to  treat  the  first  fish  caught  with  consideration  in 
order  to  conciliate  the  rest  of  the  fish,  for  their  conduct 
may  be  supposed  to  be  influenced  by  the  reception 
given  to  the  first  of  their  kind  which  is  taken.  Ac- 
cordingly the  Maoris  always  put  back  into  the  sea  the 
first  fish  caught,  "  with  a  prayer  that  it  may  tempt 
other  fish  to  come  and  be  caught."^ 

Still  more  stringent  are  the  precautions  taken 
when  the  fish  are  the  first  of  the  season.  On  salmon 
rivers,  when  the  fish  begin  to  run  up  the  stream  in 
spring,  they  are  received  with  much  deference  by 
tribes  who,  like  the  Indians  of  the  Pacific  Coast  of 
North  America,  subsist  largely  upon  a  fish  diet.  In 
British  Columbia  the  Indians  used  to  go  out  to  meet 
the  first  fish  as  they  came  up  the  river.     "  They  paid 

1  Sagard,  Le  Grand  Voyage  du  Pays  *  R.  Taylor,  Te  Ika  a  Alaui;  or,  N'ew 
des  Hiirons,  p.  255  sqq,  (p.  178  sqq.  Zealand  and  its  Inhabitants,  p.  200; 
of  the  Paris  reprint).  A.   S.    Thomson,    The   Story   of  New 

2  Schleiden,  Das  Salz,  p.  47.  For  Zealand,  i.  202;  E.  Tregear,  "The 
this  reference  I  am  indebted  to  my  Maoris  of  New  Zealand,"  y^z^rwa/ ^«- 
friend  Prof.  W.  Robertson  Smith.  throp.  Inst.  xix.  109. 

3  W.  Powell,  Wanderings  in  a  Wild 
Country,  p.  66  sq. 


OF   THE  FISH 


court  to  them,  and  would  address  them  thus.  '  You 
fish,  you  fish  ;  you  are  all  chiefs,  you  are  ;  you  are  all 
chiefs.'"  1  Amongst  the  Thlinket  of  Alaska  the  first 
halibut  of  the  season  is  carefully  handled,  addressed  as 
a  chief,  and  a  festival  is  given  in  his  honour,  after 
which  the  fishing  goes  on.-  In  spring,  when  the 
winds  blow  soft  from  the  south  and  the  salmon  begin 
to  run  up  the  Klamath  river,  the  Karoks  of  California 
dance  for  salmon,  to  ensure  a  good  catch.  One  of  the 
Indians,  called  the  Kareya  or  God-man,  retires  to  the 
mountains  and  fasts  for  ten  days.  On  his  return  the 
people  flee,  while  he  goes  to  the  river,  takes  the  first 
salmon  of  the  catch,  eats  some  of  it,  and  with  the  rest 
kindles  the  sacred  fire  in  the  sweating -house.  "No 
Indian  may  take  a  salmon  before  this  dance  is  held, 
nor  for  ten  days  after  it,  even  if  his  family  are 
starving."  The  Karoks  also  believe  that  a  fisherman 
will  take  no  salmon  if  the  poles  of  which  his  spearing- 
booth  is  made  were  gathered  on  the  river-side,  where 
the  salmon  might  have  seen  them.  The  poles  must 
be  brought  from  the  top  of  the  highest  mountain.  The 
fisherman  will  also  labour  in  vain  if  he  uses  the  same 
poles  a  second  year  in  booths  or  weirs,  "because  the 
old  salmon  will  have  told  the  young  ones  about 
them."^  Among  the  Indians  of  the  Columbia  River, 
"  when  the  salmon  make  their  first  appearance  in  the 
river,  they  are  never  allowed  to  be  cut  crosswise, 
nor  boiled,  but  roasted  ;  nor  are  they  allowed  to  be 
sold  without  the  heart  being  first  taken  out,  nor  to 
be  kept  over  night,  but  must  be  all  consumed  or  eaten 
the  day  they  are  taken  out  of  the  water.     All  these 

1  Lubbock,  Origin  of  Civilisation,^  p.  277,  o^o'a.w^  Metlahkatlah,  p.  96. 

2  W.  Dall,  Alaska  and  its  Resources,  p.  413. 

^  Stephen  Powers,  T7-ibes  of  California,  p.  31  sq. 


122  THE  RESURRECTION 


rules  are  observed  for  about  ten  days."  ^  They  think 
that  if  the  heart  of  a  fish  were  eaten  by  a  stranger 
at  the  beginning  of  the  season,  they  would  catch  no 
more  fish.  Hence,  they  roast  and  eat  the  hearts 
themselves.-  There  is  a  favourite  fish  of  the  Ainos 
which  appears  in  their  rivers  about  May  and  June. 
They  prepare  for  the  fishing  by  observing  rules  of 
ceremonial  purity,  and  when  they  have  gone  out  to 
fish,  the  women  at  home  must  keep  strict  silence  or  the 
fish  would  hear  them  and  disappear.  When  the  first 
fish  is  caught  he  is  brought  home  and  passed  through  a 
small  opening  at  the  end  of  the  hut,  but  not  through 
the  door;  for  if  he  were  passed  through  the  door,  "the 
other  fish  would  certainly  see  him  and  disappear."^ 
This  explains  the  custom  observed  by  other  savages  of 
bringing  game  into  their  huts,  not  by  the  door,  but  by 
the  window,  the  smoke-hole,  or  by  a  special  opening  at 
the  back  of  the  hut.^ 

With  some  savages  a  special  reason  for  respecting 
the  bones  of  game,  and  generally  of  the  animals  which 
they  eat,  is  a  belief  that,  if  the  bones  are  preserved, 
they  will  in  course  of  time  be  reclothed  with  flesh,  and 
thus  the  animal  will  come  to  life  again.  It  is,  there- 
fore, clearly  for  the  interest  of  the  hunter  to  leave 
the  bones  intact,  since  to  destroy  them  would  be  to 
diminish  the  future  supply  of  game.  Many  of  the  Min- 
netaree  Indians  "believe  that  the  bones  of  those  bisons 
which  they  have  slain  and  divested  of  flesh  rise  again 

1  Alex.  Ross,  Adventures  of  the  First      the  heart  of  the  fish  out  before  they  sell 
Settlers    on   the    Oregon   or    Columbia      it." 

River,  p.  97.  3  h.  C.  St.  John,  "The  Ainos,"  in 

Journ.     Anthrop.     Inst.    ii.    253 ;    id. 

2  Ch.  Wilkes,  Narrative  of  the  U.S.      Notes  and  Sketches  from  the  Wild  Coasts 
Exploring  Expedition,  iv.  324,  v,  1 19,      of  Nipon,  p.  27  sq. 

where  it  is  said,  "  a  dog  must  never  be  *  Schefifer,    lapponia,    p.    242    sq.', 

permitted  to  eat  the  heart  of  a  salmon ;     Journ.  Anthrop.  Inst.  vii.  207  ;  Revue 
and  in  order  to  prevent  this,  they  cut      d'Ethnographie,  ii.  308  sq. 


OF  ANIMALS  123 


clothed  with  renewed  flesh,  and  quickened  with  Hfe, 
and  become  fat,  and  fit  for  slaughter  the  succeeding 
June."^     Hence  on  the  western  prairies  of  America, 
the  skulls  of  buffalos  may  be  seen  arranged  in  circles 
and  symmetrical  piles,  awaiting  the  resurrection.^    After 
feasting  on  a  dog,  the   Dacotas  carefully  collect  the 
bones,  scrape,  wash,  and  bury  them,  "partly,  as  it  is  said, 
to  testify  to  the  dog-species,  that  in  feasting  upon  one 
of  their  number  no  disrespect  was  meant  to  the  species 
itself,  and  partly  also  from  a  belief  that  the  bones  of 
the    animal    will    rise    and    reproduce   another."^     In 
sacrificing  an  animal  the  Lapps  regularly  put  aside  the 
bones,   eyes,   ears,    heart,   lungs,   sexual   parts  (if  the  • 
animal  was  a  male),   and  a  morsel  of  flesh  from  each 
limb.     Then,  after  eating  the  rest  of  the  flesh,  they 
laid  the  bones  etc.  in  anatomical  order  in  a  coffin  and 
buried  them   with  the  usual  rites,  believing  that  the 
god  to  whom  the  animal  was  sacrificed  would  reclothe 
the  bones  with  flesh  and  restore  the  animal  to  life  in 
Jabme-Aimo,    the  subterranean    world    of  the    dead. 
Sometimes,  as  after  feasting  on  a  bear,  they  seem  to 
have   contented    themselves    with   thus    burying    the 
bones.*     Thus  the  Lapps  expected  the  resurrection  of 
the  slain  animal  to  take  place  in  another  world,  resem- 
bling in  this  respect  the  Kamtchatkans,  who  believed 
that  every  creature,  down  to  the  smallest  fly,  would 
rise  from   the  dead  and  live  underground.^     On  the 

1  James,  Expedition  frotn  Pittsburgh      up  (paged  separately)  with  the  work  of 
to  the  Rocky  Mountains,  i.  257.  C.  Leem,  De  Lapponibus  Finmarchiae 

9  T.  •   .         j\T  si      jr  ^7     M ...  u/^,.7j       eorumgue    lingua,     vita,     et    religione 

2  Brinton,  Myths  of  the  New  World,       ^   .  ,.''  t  4-  n  o/;,,  o„rino^;=>i\ 

c,  p?-istinafom»ie>itatto(La.Un  ana Uanisn), 

P'  ^7  Copenhagen,  1767.      Compare  Leem's 

3  Keating,  Expedition  to  the  Source      ^^^^^   pp_   418-420    (Latin),   428    sq., 
of  St.  Peter's  River,  i.  452.  ^j^^   Acerbi,    Travels  through  Sweden, 

*  E.  J.   Jessen,   De  Finnorum  Lap-  Finnland,  and  Lapland,  ii.  302. 

ponumque  Norwegicorum  religione  pa-  ^  Steller,      Beschreibung     von     dent 

gana  tractatus  singulai-is,  pp.  46  sq.,  52  Lande  Kamtschatka,  p.  269 ;  Kraschen- 

sq.,  65.     The  work  of  Jessen  is  bound  nikow,  Kamtschatka,  p.  246. 


124 


RESURRECTION 


Other  hand,  the  North  American  Indians  looked  for 
the  resurrection  of  the  animals  in  the  present  world. 
The  habit,  observed  especially  by  Mongolian  peoples, 
of  stuffing  the  skin  of  a  sacrificed  animal,  or  stretching 
it  on  a  framework,^  points  rather  to  a  belief  in  a  resur- 
rection of  the  latter  sort.  The  objection  commonly 
entertained  by  primitive  peoples  to  break  the  bones  of 
the  animals  which  they  have  eaten  or  sacrificed  ^  may 
be  based  either  on  a  belief  in  the  resurrection  of  the 
animals,  or  on  a  fear  of  intimidating  the  other  creatures 


1  See  Erman,  referred  to  above,  p. 
Ill  sq.;  Gmelin,  Reise  durch  Sibirien, 
i.  274,  ii.  182  sq.,  214;  Vambery,  Das 
Tiirkenvolk,  p.  118  sq.  When  a  fox, 
the  sacred  animal  of  the  Conchucos  in 
Peru,  had  been  killed,  its  skin  was 
stuffed  and  set  up.  Bastian,  Die  Cul- 
turlcinder  des  alien  Atnerika,  i.  443. 
Cp.  the  Iwtipkonia,  above,  p.  38  sq. 

^  At  the  annual  sacrifice  of  the 
White  Dog,  the  Iroquois  were  careful 
to  strangle  the  animal  without  shedding 
its  blood  or  breaking  its  bones.  The 
dog  was  afterwards  burned.  L.  H. 
Morgan,  League  of  the  Iroquois,  p. 
210.  It  is  a  rule  with  some  of  the 
Australian  blacks  that  in  killing  the 
native  bear  they  must  not  break  his 
bones.  They  say  that  the  native  bear 
once  stole  all  the  water  of  the  river, 
and  that  if  they  were  to  break  his  bones 
or  take  off  his  skin  before  roasting  him, 
he  would  do  so  again.  Brough  Smyth, 
Aborigines  of  Vicfo>-ia,  i.  447  sqq.  When 
the  Tartars  whom  Carpini  visited  killed 
animals  for  eating,  they  might  not  break 
their  bones  but  burned  them  with  fire. 
Carpini,  Historia  Mongalorum  (Paris, 
1838),  cap.  iii.  §  i.  2,  p.  620.  North 
American  Indians  might  not  break  the 
bones  of  the  animals  which  they  ate  at 
feasts.  Charlevoix,  Histoire  de  la  Nou- 
velle  France,  vi.  72.  In  the  warfeast  held 
by  Indian  warriors  after  leaving  home, 
a  whole  animal  was  cooked  and  had  to 
be  all  eaten.  No  bone  of  it  might  be 
broken.  After  being  stripped  of  the' 
flesh  the  bones  were  hung  on  a  tree. 


Narrative  of  the  Captivity  and  Adven- 
tures of  John  Tanner,  p.  287.  On 
St.  Olaf's  Day  (29th  July)  the  Karels 
of  Finland  kill  a  lamb,  without  using  a 
knife,  and  roast  it  whole.  None  of 
its  bones  may  be  broken.  The  lamb 
has  not  been  shorn  since  spring.  Some 
of  the  flesh  is  placed  in  a  corner  of  the 
room  for  the  house  -  spirits,  some  is 
deposited  on  the  field  and  beside  the 
birch  -  trees  which  are  destined  to  be 
used  as  May-trees  next  year.  W.  Mann- 
hardt,  A.  IV.  F.  p.  160  sq.  note.  The 
Innuit  (Esquimaux)  of  Point  Barrow, 
Alaska,  carefully  preserve  unbroken 
the  bones  of  the  seals  which  they  have 
caught  and  return  them  to  the  sea, 
either  leaving  them  in  an  ice-crack  far 
out  from  the  land  or  dropping  them 
through  a  hole  in  the  ice.  By  doing 
so  they  think  they  secure  good  fortune 
in  the  pursuit  of  seals.  Repoi-t  of  the 
International  Expedition  to  Point  Bar- 
row, Alaska  (Washington,  1885),  p. 
40.  In  this  last  custom  the  idea  prol^- 
ably  is  that  the  bones  will  be  reclothed 
with  flesh  and  the  seals  come  to  life 
again.  The  Mosquito  Indians  of  Central 
America  carefully  preserved  the  bones 
of  deer  and  the  shells  of  eggs,  lest  the 
deer  or  chickens  should  die  or  disappear. 
Bancroft,  Native  Races  of  the  Pacific 
States,  i.  741.  The  Yurucares  of 
Bolivia  "carefully  put  by  even  small 
fish  bones,  saying  that  unless  this  is 
done  the  fish  and  game  will  disappear 
from  the  country."  Brinton,  Myths  of 
the  New  World,  p.  278. 


IN  FOLK-TALES  125 


of  the  same  species  and  offending  the  ghosts  of  the 
slain    animals.     The    reluctance    of  North    American 
Indians  to  let  dogs  gnaw  the  bones  of  animals^  is  per- 
haps only  a  precaution  to  prevent  the  bones  from  being 
broken.     There  are  traces  in  folk- tales  of  the  same 
primitive  belief  that  animals  or  men  may  come  to  life 
again,   if   only  their   bones    are    preserved ;    not   un- 
commonly the  animal  or  man  in  the  story  comes  to  life 
lame  of  a  limb,  because  one  of  his   bones  has   been 
eaten,  broken,  or  lost."     In  a  Magyar  tale,  the  hero  is 
cut    in    pieces,   but  the    serpent -king  lays    the  bones 
together  in  their  proper  order,  and  washes  them  with 
water,  whereupon  the  hero  comes  to  life  again.      His 
shoulder-blade,  however,  had  been  lost,  so  the  serpent- 
king  supplied  its  place  with  one  of  gold  and   ivory.^ 
Such  stories,    as    Mannhardt  has    seen,  explain    why 
Pythagoras,  who  claimed  to  have  lived  many  lives,  one 
after  the  other,  was  said  to  have  exhibited  his  golden 
leg  as  a  proof  of  his  supernatural  pretensions.^     Doubt- 
less he  was  reported  to  have  explained  that  at  one  of 
his  resurrections  a   leg  had  been  broken  or  mislaid, 

1  Relations    des  Jesuites,    1634,    p.  be   a   way   of  transmitting    the    bones 

25,  ed.  1858  ;  A.    Mackenzie,   Voyages  to  the  spirit-land.     The  aborigines  of 

through  the  Continent  of  Atnerica,  civ;  Australia  burn  the  bones  of  the  animals 

J.  Dunn,  History  of  the  Oregon   Tcrri-  which    they    eat,    but    for    a    different 

tory,  p.  99  ;  Whymper  mjonrn.  Royal  reason  ;  they  think    that    if  an   enemy 

Geogr.  Soc.  xxxviii.  (1868)  p.  228  ;  id.  got  hold  of  the  bones  and  burned  them 

in    Transact.   Etiinolog.   Soc.   vii.  174;  with  charms,  it  would  cause  the  death 

A.  P.  Reid,    "Religious  Belief  of  the  of  the  person  who  had  eaten  the  animal. 

Ojibois    Indians,"  in  Journ,   Anthrop.  Native  Tribes  of  South  Australia,  pp. 

Inst.   iii.    III.     After  a  meal  the   In-  24,  196. 

dians  of  Costa  Rica  gather  all  the  bones  -  Mannhardt,   Germanische  Mythen, 

carefully  and  either  burn  them  or  put  pp.  57-74  ;  ^'^-j  ^-  ^-  P-  "6;  Cosquin, 

them  out  of  reach  of  the  dogs.     W.  M.  Contes  populaires  de  Lorraine,  ii.   25  ; 

Gabb,  On  the  Indian  Tribes  and  Lan-  Hartland,  "  The  physicians  of  Myddfai," 

guages  of  Costa  Rica  (read  before  the  Airhaeological  Review,    i.    30   sq.      In 

American  Philosophical  Society,   20th  folk-tales,  as  in  primitive  custom,  the 

Aug.      1875),     p.     520    (Philadelphia,  blood  is  sometimes  not  allowed  to  fall 

1875).        The     fact     that    the     bones  on  the  ground.      See  Cosquin,  I.e. 

are  often  burned  to  prevent  the  dogs  ^  \v.  Mannhardt,  Gen/i.  Myth.  p.  66. 

getting  them   does   not   contradict  the  *  Jamblichus,    Vita   Tythag.   §§  92, 

view  suggested   in   the   text.      It  may  135,  140;  Porphyry,  Vit.  Pythag.%2^. 


126  ABSTINENCE  FROM  chap. 

and  that  it  had  been  replaced  with  one  of  gold. 
Similarly,  when  the  murdered  Pelops  was  restored 
to  life,  the  shoulder  which  Demeter  had  eaten  was 
replaced  with  one  of  ivory.^  The  story  that  one  of 
the  members  of  the  mangled  Osiris  was  eaten  by  fish, 
and  that,  when  Isis  collected  his  scattered  limbs,  she 
replaced  the  missing  member  with  one  of  wood,^  may 
perhaps  belong  to  the  same  circle  of  beliefs. 

There  is  a  certain  rule  observed  by  savage  hunters 
and  fishers  which,  obscure  at  first  sight,  may  be 
explained  by  this  savage  belief  in  resurrection.  A 
traveller  in  America  in  the  early  part  of  this  century 
was  told  by  a  half-breed  Choctaw  that  the  Indians 
"  had  an  obscure  story,  somewhat  resembling  that  of 
Jacob  wrestling  with  an  angel;  and  that  the  full-blooded 
Indians  always  separate  the  sinew  which  shrank,  and 
that  it  is  never  seen  in  the  venison  exposed  for  sale  ; 
he  did  not  know  what  they  did  with  it.  His  elder 
brother,  whom  I  afterwards  met,  told  me  that  they  eat 
it  as  a  rarity ;  but  I  have  also  heard,  though  on  less 
respectable  authority,  that  they  refrain  from  it,  like  the 
ancient  Jews.  A  gentleman,  who  had  lived  on  the 
Indian  frontier,  or  in  the  nation,  for  ten  or  fifteen  years, 
told  me  that  he  had  often  been  surprised  that  the 
Indians  always  detatched  the  sinew  ;  but  it  had  never 
occurred  to  him  to  inquire  the  reason."^  James  Adair, 
who  knew  the  Indians  of  the  South  Eastern  States 
intimately,  and  whose  theories  appear  not  to  have  dis- 
torted his  view  of  the  facts,  observes  that  "when  in 
the  woods,  the  Indians  cut  a  small  piece  out  of  the 
lower  part  of  the  thighs  of  the  deer  they  kill,  length- 

1  Pindar,    Olymp.   i.    37    sqq.,    with  pious  Herodotus  (ii.  48)  concealed  and 

the  Scholiast.  the  pious  Plutarch  divulged. 

■■^  Plutarch,  Isis  ct  Osiris,  18.     This  ^  AAzmWoAgsou,  letters fi-oin  North 

is  one  of  the  sacred  stories  which  the  America,  i.  244. 


"I  THE   SINEW  OF  THE   THIGH  127 

ways  and  pretty  deep.     Among  the  great  number  of 
venison -hams  they  bring  to  our  trading  houses,  I  do 
not  remember  to  have  observed  one  without  it.  .   .  . 
And  I  have  been  assured  by  a  gentleman  of  character, 
who  is  now  an  inhabitant  of  South  Carolina,  and  well 
acquainted  with  the  customs  of  the  Northern   Indians, 
that  they  also  cut  a  piece  out  of  the  thigh  of  every  deer 
they  kill,    and  throw  it  away  ;  and  reckon   it  such  a 
dangerous  pollution  to  eat  it  as  to  occasion  sickness 
and  other  misfortunes  of  sundry  kinds,  especially  by 
spoiling  their  guns  from  shooting  with  proper  force  and 
direction."^     In  recent  years  the  statement  of  Adair's 
informant  has  been  confirmed  by  the  French  missionary 
Petitot,  who  has  also  published  the  "obscure  story"  to 
which  Hodgson  refers.     The  Loucheux  and  Hare-skin 
Indians  who  roam  the  bleak  steppes  and  forests  that 
stretch  from  Hudson's  Bay  to  the  Rocky  Mountains, 
and    northward   to  the   frozen   sea,   are   forbidden   by 
custom  to  eat  the  sinew  of  the  legs  of  animals.     To 
explain  this   custom   they  tell   the    following  "sacred 
story."     Once  upon  a  time  a  man  found  a  burrow  of 
porcupines,  and  going  down  into  it  after  the  porcupines 
he  lost  his  way  in  the  darkness,  till  a  kind  giant  called 
"He  who  sees  before  and  behind  "  released  him  by 
cleaving  open  the  earth.     So  the  man,   whose  name 
was    "Fireless  and   Homeless,"   lived  with   the    kind 
giant,  and  the  giant  hunted  elans  and  beavers  for  him, 
and  carried  him  about  in  the  sheath  of  his  flint  knife. 
"But  know,  my  son,"  said  the  giant,   "that  he  who 
uses  the  sky  as  his  head  is  angry  with  me,  and  has 
sworn  my  destruction.      If  he  slays  me  the  clouds  will 
be  tinged  with  my  blood  ;  they  will  be  red  with  it,  prob- 
ably."     Then  he  gave  the  man  an  axe  made  of  the 

1  Adair,  History  of  the  American  Indians,  p.  137  sq. 


128  THE  SINEW  OF   THE   THIGH  chap. 

tooth  of  a  gigantic  beaver,  and  went  forth  to  meet  his 
enemy.  But  from  under  the  ice  the  man  heard  a  dull 
muffled  sound.  It  was  a  whale  which  was  making  this 
noise  because  it  was  naked  and  cold.  Warned  by  the 
man,  the  giant  went  toward  the  whale,  which  took 
human  shape,  and  rushed  upon  the  giant.  It  was 
the  wicked  giant,  the  kind  giant's  enemy.  The  two 
struggled  together  for  a  long  time,  till  the  kind  giant 
cried,  "Oh,  my  son!  cut,  cut  the  sinew  of  the  leg." 
The  man  cut  the  sinew,  and  the  wicked  giant  fell  down 
and  was  slain.  That  is  why  the  Indians  do  not  eat 
the  sinew  of  the  leg.  Afterwards,  one  day  the  sky 
suddenly  grew  red,  so  Fireless  and  Homeless  knew 
that  the  kind  giant  was  dead,  and  he  wept.^  This 
myth,  it  is  almost  needless  to  observe,  does  not  really 
explain  the  custom.  No  people  ever  observed  a  custom 
because  a  mythical  being  was  said  to  have  once  acted 
in  a  certain  way.  But,  on  the  contrary,  all  peoples 
have  invented  myths  to  explain  why  they  observed 
certain  customs.  Dismissing,  therefore,  the  story  of 
Fireless  and  Homeless  as  a  myth  invented  to  explain 
why  the  Indians  abstain  from  eating  a  particular  sinew, 
it  may  be  suggested  -  that  the  original  reason  for  observ- 
ing the  custom  was  a  belief  that  the  sinew  in  question 
was  necessary  to  reproduction,  and  that  deprived  of  it 
the  slain  animals  could  not  come  to  life  again  and  stock 
the  steppes  and  prairies  either  of  the  present  world  or 
of  the  spirit  land.     We  have  seen  that  the  resurrection 

^  Petitot,     Afoiiogi-aphie    dcs    Dene-  of  the  Semites,  first  series,  p.  360,  note 

Dindjie  (Paris,  1867),  pp.   77,  81   sq.;  2.      The    Faleshas,   a   Jewish    sect  of 

id.,    Traditions    indieiines    da    Canada  Abyssinia,  after  killing  an  animal    for 

Nord-oitest  (Paris,  1S86),  p.    132  sqq.,  food,  "  carefully  remove  the  vein  from 

cp.  pp.  41,  76,  213,  264.  the  thighs  with  its  surrounding  flesh." 

Halevy,    "Travels    in    Abyssinia,"    in 

^  The  first  part  of  this  suggestion  is  Publications  of  tJie  Society  of  Hebrew 

that  of  my  friend  Prof.  W.  Robertson  Literature,   second    series,    vol.    ii.    p. 

Smith.    See  his  Lectures  on  the  Relis;ion  220. 


Ill  VERMIN  RESPECTED  129 

of  animals  is  a  common  article  of  savage  faith,  and  that 
when  the  Lapps  bury  the  skeleton  of  the  male  bear  in 
the  hope  of  its  resurrection  they  are  careful  to  bury 
the  genital  parts  along  with  it/ 

Besides   the  animals  which  primitive   man  dreads 
for   their   strength,  and   ferocity,   and  those   which   he 
reveres  on  account  of  the  benefits  which  he  expects 
from  them,  there  is  another  class  of  creatures  which  he 
sometimes  deems  it  necessary  to  conciliate  by  worship 
and  sacrifice.      These  are  the  vermin  that  infest  the 
crops.     To  rid  himself  of  these  deadly  foes  the  farmer 
has   recourse  to  a  thousand  superstitious  devices,  of 
which,  though  many  are  meant  to  destroy  or  intimidate 
the  vermin,  others  aim  at  propitiating  them  and  per- 
suading them  by  fair  means  to  spare  the  fruits  of  the 
earth.       Thus    Esthonian   peasants,    in    the    Island   of 
Oesel,  stand  in  great  awe  of  the  weevil,  an  insect  which 
is  exceedingly  destructive  to  the  grain.     They  give  it 
a  euphemistic   title,   and  if   a  child  is  about  to  kill   a 

1  It  seems  to  be  a  common  custom  slain  and  preserves  it  as  a  token.     The 

with  hunters  to  cut  out  the  tongues  of  incident  serves  to  show  that  the  custom 

the  animals   which   they  kill.      Omaha  was   a    common    one,    since    folk-tales 

hunters  remove  the  tongue  of   a  slain  reflect  with  accuracy  the  customs  and 

buffalo  through  an  opening  made  in  the  beliefs  of  a  primitive  age.     For  examples 

animal's  throat.      The  tongues  thus  re-  of    the     incident,    see     Blade,     Contes 

moved   are  sacred   and    may  not    touch  populaires  recueillis  en  Agenais,  pp.  1 2, 

any  tool  or  metal  except  when  they  are  14;  Dasent,  Tales  from  the  Norse,  p.  133 

boiling  in  the  kettles  at  the  sacred  tent.  sq.  {'Shortshanks  ') ;  Schleicher,  Litau- 

They  are  eaten  as  sacred  food.      Third  ische  Mdrchen,  p.  58;   Sepp,  Altbayer- 

Report   of    the    Bureau    of  Ethnology  ischer  Sagcnschatz,  p.   114;   Kohler  on 

(Washington),  p.  289  sq.      Indian  bear-  Gonzenbach"s  Sicilianische  Mdrchen,  ii. 

hunters  cut  out  what  they  call  the  bear's  230  ;  Apollodorus,  iii.  13,3  ;  Mannhardt, 

little  tongue   (a   fleshy  mass  under  the  A.IV.  F.^.<)i;Yo&iX\oVi,Lappldndische 

real  tongue)  and  keep  it   for  good  luck  Mdrchen,  p.  231   sq.      It   may  be  sug- 

in  hunting  or  burn  it  to  determine  from  gested  that  the  cutting  out  of  the  tongues 

its  crackling,  etc.,  whether  the  soul  of  is   a   precaution    to    prevent    the    slain 

the  slain   bear  is  angry  with   them   or  animals  from   telling  their  fate  to   the 

not.      Kohl,  Kitschi-Gami,  ii.  251   sq.;  live  animals  and  thus  frightening  away 

Charlevoix,    Histoire    de     la    Nouvelle  the   latter.       At   least   this  explanation 

France,  v.  173  ;  Chateaubriand,  Voyage  harmonises   with    the   primitive    modes 

en  Amerique,-^^.  i^f)  sq.,\%if.    In  folk-  of   thought    revealed    in    the  foregoing 

tales   the   hero  commonly  cuts  out  the  customs, 
tongue  of  the  wild  beast  which  he  has 

VOL.  II  K 


I30  VERMIN  RESPECTED  chap. 

weevil  they  say,  "  Don't  do  it ;  the  more  we  hurt  him, 
the  more  he  hurts  us."  If  they  find  a  weevil  they  bury 
it  in  the  earth  instead  of  killing  it.  Some  even  put  the 
weevil  under  a  stone  in  the  field  and  offer  corn  to  it. 
They  think  that  thus  it  is  appeased  and  does  less 
harm.^  Amongst  the  Saxons  of  Transylvania,  in  order 
to  keep  sparrows  from  the  corn,  the  sower  begins  by 
throwing  the  first  handful  of  seed  backwards  over  his 
head,  saying,  "That  is  for  you,  sparrows."  To  guard 
the  corn  against  the  attacks  of  leaf-fiies  [ErdfloJie)  he 
shuts  his  eyes  and  scatters  three  handfuls  of  oats  in 
different  directions.  Having  made  this  offering  to  the 
leaf-flies  he  feels  sure  that  they  will  spare  the  corn.  A 
Transylvanian  way  of  securing  the  crops  against  all 
birds,  beasts,  and  insects,  is  this  :  After  he  has  finished 
sowing,  the  sower  goes  once  more  from  end  to  end  of 
the  field  imitating  the  gesture  of  sowing,  but  with  an 
empty  hand.  As  he  does  so  he  says,  "  I  sow  this  for 
the  animals ;  I  sow  it  for  everything  that  flies  and 
creeps,  that  walks  and  stands,  that  sings  and  springs, 
in  the  nftme  of  God  the  Father,  etc."^  The  following 
is  a  German  way  of  freeing  a  garden  from  caterpillars. 
After  sunset  or  at  midnight  the  mistress  of  the  house, 
or  another  female  member  of  the  family,  walks  all' 
round  the  garden  dragging  a  broom  after  her.  She 
must  not  look  behind  her,  and  must  keep  murmuring, 
"  Good  evening,  Mother  Caterpillar,  you  shall  come 
with  your  husband  to  church."  The  garden  gate  is 
left  open  till  the  following  morning.^ 

Sometimes     in    dealing    with    vermin    the    farmer 


1  Holzmayer,  Osiliana,  ^.   lo^  no^e.  ^  E.  Krause,  "  Aberglaubische  Kuren 

2  Heinrich,  Ag7'arische  Sitten  tmd  und  sonstiger  Aberglaube  in  Berlin," 
Gebrdtiche  unler  den  Sachsen  Sicbcn-  Zeitschrift  fiir  Ethnologic,  xv.  (1SS3) 
biirgens,  p.  15  sq.  p.  93. 


in  VERMIN  RESPECTED  131 

resorts  neither  to  unmitigated  severity  nor  to  un- 
bounded indulgence,  but  aims  at  adopting  a  judicious 
compromise  between  the  two ;  kind  but  firm,  he 
tempers  severity  with  mercy.  An  ancient  Greek 
treatise  on  farming  advises  the  husbandman  who 
would  rid  his  lands  of  mice  to  act  thus  :  "  Take  a 
sheet  of  paper  and  write  on  it  as  follows  :  '  I  adjure 
you,  ye  mice  here  present,  that  ye  neither  injure  me 
nor  suffer  another  mouse  to  do  so.  I  give  you  yonder 
field  '  (here  you  specify  the  field)  ;  '  but  if  ever  I 
catch  you  here  again,  by  the  Mother  of  the  Gods 
I  will  rend  you  in  seven  pieces.'  Write  this,  and 
stick  the  paper  on  an  unhewn  stone  in  the  field 
before  sunrise,  taking  care  to  keep  the  written  side 
uppermost."  ^  Sometimes  the  desired  object  is 
supposed  to  be  attained  by  treating  with  high 
distinction  one  or  two  chosen  individuals  of  the 
obnoxious  species,  while  the  rest  are  pursued  with 
relendess  rigour.  In  the  East  Indian  island  of 
Bali,  the  mice  which  ravage  the  rice -fields  are 
caught  in  great  numbers,  and  burned  in  the  same 
way  that  corpses  are  burned.  But  two  of  the 
captured  mice  are  allowed  to  live,  and  receive  a 
little  packet  of  white  linen.  Then  the  people  bow 
down  before  them,  as  before  gods,  and  let  them 
go.^  In  some  parts  of  Bohemia  the  peasant,  though 
he  kills  field  mice  and  gray  mice  without  scruple, 
always  spares  white  mice.  If  he  finds  a  white  mouse 
he  takes  it  up  carefully,  and  makes  a  comfortable  bed 
for  it  in  the  window  ;  for  if  it  died  the  luck  of  the 
house    would    be    gone,    and    the    gray    mice    would 

1   Geoponica,   xiii.    5.      According   to  farmer's  own  land, 

the  commentator,  the  field   assigned  to  -   R.    van   Eck,    "  Schetsen    van   het 

the  mice   is  a   neighbour's,  but  it  may  eiland  Bali,"  in  Tijdschrift  voor  Neder- 

be    a   patch    of   waste   ground   on    the  landsch  Indie ^  N.S.  viii.  (1879)  p.  125. 


132  VERMIN  RESPECTED  chap. 

multiply  fearfully  in  the  house. ^  When  caterpillars 
invaded  a  vineyard  or  field  in  Syria,  the  virgins 
were  gathered,  and  one  of  the  caterpillars  was  taken 
and  a  girl  made  its  mother.  Then  they  bewailed 
and  buried  it.  Thereafter  they  conducted  the 
"  mother "  to  the  place  where  the  caterpillars  were, 
consoling  her,  in  order  that  all  the  caterpillars  might 
leave  the  garden."  On  the  ist  of  September,  Russian 
girls  "make  small  coffins  of  turnips  and  other  vege- 
tables, enclose  flies  and  other  insects  in  them,  and 
then  bury  them  with  a  great  show  of  mourning."^ 

In  these  latter  examples  the  deference  shown  to 
a  few  chosen  individuals  of  the  species  is  apparently 
regarded  as  entitling  a  person  to  exterminate  with 
impunity  all  the  rest  of  the  species  upon  which  he 
can  lay  hands.  This  principle  perhaps  explains  the 
attitude,  at  first  sight  puzzling  and  contradictory,  of 
the  Ainos  towards  the  bear.  The  flesh  and  skin  of 
the  bear  regularly  afford  them  food  and  clothing  ;  but 
since  the  bear  is  an  intelligent  and  powerful  animal,  it 
is  necessary  to  offer  some  satisfaction  or  atonement 
to  the  bear  species  for  the  loss  which  it  sustains 
in  the  death  of  so  many  of  its  members.  This  satis- 
faction or  atonement  is  made  by  rearing  young  bears, 
treating  them,  so  long  as  they  live,  with  respect,  and 
killing  them  with  extraordinary  marks  of  sorrow  and 
devotion.  Thus  the  other  bears  are  appeased,  and  do 
not  resent  the  slaughter  of  their  kind  by  attacking  the 
slayers  or  deserting  the  country,  and  thus  depriving 
the  Ainos  of  one  of  their  means  of  subsistence. 


1   Grohmann,    Aberglauben  umi    Ge-  I  am   indebted   to  my  friend   Prof.  W. 

hrdiuhe  aiis   Bohnien  und   Malircn,    §  Robertson  Smitli,  who  kindly  translated 

405-  it  for  me  from  the  Syriac. 

'^  l.zgz.X(\Q, Reliquiae jti lis eaiesiasiki  3  Ralston,     Sotigs    of    the    Russian 

antiijuissimae,]}.  i^i,.    For  this  passage  People,  -p.  2^^. 


TYPES   OF  ANIMAL   WORSHIP  I33 


Thus  the  primitive  worship  of  animals  assumes 
two  forms,  which  are  in  some  respects  the  converse  of 
each  other.  On  the  one  hand  animals  are  respected, 
and  are  therefore  neither  killed  nor  eaten.  Totemism 
is  a  form  of  this  worship,  if  worship  it  can  be  called  ; 
but  it  is  not  the  only  form,  for  we  have  seen  that 
dangerous  and  useless  animals,  like  the  crocodile,  are 
commonly  revered  and  spared  by  men  who  do  not 
regard  the  animal  in  question  as  their  totem.  On  the 
other  hand  animals  are  worshipped  because  they  are 
habitually  killed  and  eaten.  In  both  forms  of  worship 
the  animal  is  revered  on  account  of  some  benefit, 
positive  or  negative,  which  the  savage  hopes  to 
receive  from  it.  In  the  former  worship  the  benefit 
comes  either  in  the  positive  form  of  protection,  advice, 
and  help  which  the  animal  affords  the  man,  or  in  the 
negative  one  of  abstinence  from  injuries  which  it 
is  in  the  power  of  the  animal  to  inflict.  In  the 
latter  worship  the  benefit  takes  the  material  form 
of  the  animal's  flesh  and  skin.  The  two  forms  of 
worship  are  in  some  measure  antithetical :  in  the 
one,  the  animal  is  not  eaten  because  it  is  revered  ; 
in  the  other,  it  is  revered  because  it  is  eaten.  But 
both  may  be  practised  by  the  same  people,  as  we 
see  in  the  case  of  the  North  American  Indians, 
who,  while  they  revere  and  spare  their  totem  animals, 
also  revere  the  animals  and  fish  upon  which  they 
subsist.  The  aborigines  of  Australia  have  totemism 
in  the  most  primitive  form  known  to  us,  but,  so  far 
as  I  am  aware,  there  is  no  evidence  that  they  at- 
tempt, like  the  North  American  Indians,  to  con- 
ciliate the  animals  which  they  kill  and  eat.  The 
means  which  the  Australians  adopt  to  secure  a 
plentiful  supply  of  game  appear  to   be   based   not  on 


134  TYPES   OF  ANIMAL    WORSHIP  chap. 

conciliation,  but  on  sympathetic  magic/  a  principle 
to  which  the  North  American  Indians  also  resort 
for  the  same  purpose."  If  this  is  so,  it  would  appear 
that  the  totemistic  respect  for  animals  is  older  than 
the  other,  and  that,  before  hunters  think  of  wor- 
shipping the  game  as  a  means  of  ensuring  an 
abundant  supply  of  it,  they  seek  to  attain  the  same 
end  by  sympathetic  magic.  This,  again,  would  show 
—  what  there  is  good  reason  for  believing  —  that 
sympathetic  magic  is  one  of  the  earliest  means  by 
which  man  endeavours  to  adapt  the  agencies  of  nature 
to  his  needs. 

Corresponding  to  the  two  distinct  types  of  animal 
worship,  there  are  two  distinct  types  of  the  custom  of 
killing  the  animal  god.  On  the  one  hand,  when  the 
revered  animal  is  habitually  spared,  it  is  nevertheless 
killed — and  sometimes  eaten — on  rare  and  solemn 
occasions.  Examples  of  this  custom  have  been 
already  given  and  an  explanation  of  them  offered. 
On  the  other  hand,  when  the  revered  animal  is 
habitually  killed,  the  slaughter  of  any  one  of  the 
species  involves  the  killing  of  the  god,  and  is  atoned 
for  on  the  spot  by  apologies  and  sacrifices,  especially 
when  the  animal  is  a  powerful  and  dangerous  one  ; 
and,  in  addition  to  this  ordinary  and  everyday  atone- 
ment, there  is  a  special  annual  atonement,  at  which 
a  select  individual  of  the  species  is  slain  with  extra- 
ordinary marks  of  respect  and  devotion.  Clearly  the 
two  types  of  sacramental  killing — the  Egyptian  and 
the  Aino  types,  as  we  may  call  them  for  distinction — 
are    liable    to    be  confounded   by    an   observer ;    and, 

^   Compare  Amative    Tribes   of  South  -  Catlin,    0-Kee-pa,    Folium     reser- 

Anstralia,    \>.    280,    with    the   customs      vatum  ;   Lewis  and   Clarke,    Travels  to 
referred  to  in  the  following  note.  t/ic  Source  of  the  Missoini  River  {l^Qr\<\or\, 

1S15),  i.  205  s<]. 


in  PASTORAL  SACRAMENTS  I35 

before  we  can  say  to  which  type  any  particular 
example  belongs,  it  is  necessary  to  ascertain  whether 
the  animal  sacramentally  slain  belongs  to  a  species 
which  is  habitually  spared,  or  to  one  which  is 
habitually  killed  by  the  tribe.  In  the  former  case 
the  example  belongs  to  the  Egyptian  type  of  sacra- 
ment, in  the  latter  to  the  Aino  type. 

The  practice  of  pastoral  tribes  appears  to  furnish 
examples  of  both  types  of  sacrament.  "  Pastoral 
tribes,"  says  the  most  learned  ethnologist  of  the  day, 
"being  sometimes  obliged  to  sell  their  herds  to 
strangers  who  may  handle  the  bones  disrespectfully, 
seek  to  avert  the  danger  which  such  a  sacrilege  would 
entail  by  consecrating  one  of  the  herd  as  an  object  of 
worship,  eating  it  sacramentally  in  the  family  circle 
with  closed  doors,  and  afterwards  treating  the  bones 
with  all  the  ceremonious  respect  which,  strictly  speak- 
ing, should  be  accorded  to  every  head  of  cattle,  but 
which,  being  punctually  paid  to  the  representative 
animal,  is  deemed  to  be  paid  to  all.  Such  family 
meals  are  found  among  various  peoples,  especially 
those  of  the  Caucasus.  When  amongst  the  Abchases 
the  shepherds  in  spring  eat  their  common  meal  with 
their  loins  girt  and  their  staffs  in  their  hands,  this  may 
be  looked  upon  both  as  a  sacrament  and  as  an  oath  of 
mutual  help  and  support.  For  the  strongest  of  all 
oaths  is  that  which  is  accompanied  with  the  eating  of 
a  sacred  substance,  since  the  perjured  person  cannot 
possibly  escape  the  avenging  god  whom  he  has  taken 
into  his  body  and  assimilated."^     This  kind  of  sacra- 

1  A.    Bastian,  in  Verhandliingeii  der  Abghazses  (Abchases).      It  takes  place 

Berliner  Gesellschaft  fiir  Aiithropologie,  in  the  middle  of  autumn.      A  white  ox 

Ethnologie,  umi  Urgeschichte,  1870-71,  called    Ogginn    appears    from    a    holy 

p.     59.       Reinegg     [Beschreibitng    des  cave,  which  is  also  called  Ogginn.      It 

Katikasiis,    ii.    12    sq.)  describes    what  is   caught    and   led   about  amongst  the 

seems    to    be    a     sacrament     of     the  assembled   men  (women  are  excluded) 


136  PASTORAL   SACRAMENTS  chap. 

ment  is  of  the  Aino  or  expiatory  type,  since  it  is  meant 
to  atone  to  the  species  for  the  possible  ill-usage  of 
individuals.  An  expiation,  similar  in  principle  but 
different  in  details,  is  offered  by  the  Kalmucks  to  the 
sheep  whose  flesh  is  one  of  their  staple  foods.  Rich 
Kalmucks  are  in  the  habit  of  consecrating  a  white 
ram  under  the  title  of  "  the  ram  of  heaven"  or  "the 
ram  of  the  spirit."  The  animal  is  never  shorn  and 
never  sold ;  but  when  it  grows  old  and  its  owner 
wishes  to  consecrate  a  new  one,  the  old  ram  must  be 
killed  and  eaten  at  a  feast  to  which  the  neighbours  are 
invited.  On  a  lucky  day,  generally  in  autumn  when 
the  sheep  are  fat,  a  sorcerer  kills  the  old  ram,  after 
sprinkling  it  with  milk.  Its  flesh  is  eaten ;  the 
skeleton,  with  a  portion  of  the  fat,  is  burned  on  a 
turf  altar ;  and  the  skin,  with  the  head  and  feet,  is 
hung  up.^ 

An  example  of  a  sacrament  of  the  Egyptian  type 
is  furnished  by  the  Todas,  a  pastoral  people  of 
Southern  India,  who  subsist  largely  upon  the  milk  of 
their  buffaloes.  Amongst  them  "  the  buffalo  is  to  a 
certain  degree  held  sacred  "  and  "  is  treated  with  great 
kindness,  even  with  a  degree  of  adoration,  by  the 
people."  2  They  never  eat  the  flesh  of  the  cow  buffalo, 
and  as  a  rule  abstain  from  the  flesh  of  the  male.      But 

amid  joyful  cries.  Then  it  is  killed  Kalmiicken,  ii.  8o  sqq.,  122  ;  Pallas, 
and  eaten.  Any  man  who  did  not  get  Reise  ditrch  verschiedcne  Frovhizejt  dcs 
at  least  a  scrap  of  the  sacred  flesh  n/ssisf/ien  Ren/is,  i.  ;^ig,  ^^S-  Accord- 
would  deem  himself  most  unfortunate.  ing  to  Pallas,  it  is  only  rich  Kalmucks 
The  bones  are  then  carefully  collected,  who  commonly  kill  their  sheep  or 
burned  in  a  great  hole,  and  the  ashes  cattle  for  eating  ;  ordinary  Kalmucks 
buried  there.  do  not  usually  kill  them  except  in  case 
J  Bastian,  Die  Vblket-  des  ostlicheii  of  necessity  or  at  great  merry-makings. 
Asien,  vi.  632  note.  On  the  Kalmucks  It  is,  therefore,  especially  the  rich  who 
as  a  people  of  shepherds  and  on  their  need  to  make  expiation, 
diet  of  mutton,  see  Georgi,  Beschreilntng 

aller  Natio7ien    des    russischen  Reu/is,  -  W.    E.    Marshall,   Travels  amongst 

p.    406    sq.,  cp.   207  ;    B.    Bergmann,  the   Todas,  p.  129  sq.     On  the  Todas, 

A^ODiadische     Strcifereien     tinier     den  see  also  above,  vol.  i.  p.  41. 


Ill  PASTORAL   SACRAMENTS  137 

to  the  latter  rule  there  is  a  single  exception.  Once  a 
year  all  the  adult  males  of  the  village  join  in  the 
ceremony  of  killing  and  eating  a  very  young  male 
calf, — seemingly  under  a  month  old.  They  take  the 
animal  into  the  dark  recesses  of  the  villaofe  wood, 
where  it  is  killed  with  a  club  made  from  the  sacred 
tree  of  the  Todas  (the  tude  or  Millingtonia).  A 
sacred  fire  having  been  made  by  the  rubbing  of  sticks, 
the  flesh  of  the  calf  is  roasted  on  the  embers  of  certain 
trees,  and  is  eaten  by  the  men  alone,  women  being 
excluded  from  the  assembly.  This  is  the  only  occasion 
on  which  the  Todas  eat  buffalo  flesh. ^  The  Madi  or 
Moru  tribe  of  Central  Africa,  whose  chief  wealth  is 
their  cattle,  though  they  also  practice  agriculture, 
appear  to  kill  a  lamb  sacramentally  on  certain  solemn 
occasions.  The  custom  is  thus  described  by  Dr. 
Felkin.  "  A  remarkable  custom  is  observed  at  stated 
times — once  a  year,  I  am  led  to  believe.  I  have  not 
been  able  to  ascertain  what  exact  meaning  is  attached 
to  it.  It  appears,  however,  to  relieve  the  people's 
minds,  for  beforehand  they  evince  much  sadness,  and 
seem  very  joyful  when  the  ceremony  is  duly  accom- 
plished. The  following  is  what  takes  place  :  A  large 
concourse  of  people  of  all  ages  assemble,  and  sit  down 
round  a  circle  of  stones,  which  is  erected  by  the  side  of 
a  road  (really  a  narrow  path).  A  very  choice  lamb  is 
then  fetched  by  a  boy,  who  leads  it  four  times  round 
the  assembled  people.  As  it  passes  they  pluck  off 
little  bits  of  its  fleece  and  place  them  in  their  hair,  or 
on  to  some  other  part  of  their  body.  The  lamb  is  then 
led  up  to  the  stones,  and  there  killed  by  a  man  belong- 
ing to  a  kind  of  priestly  order,  who  takes  some  of  the 
blood  and  sprinkles  it  four  times  over  the  people.      He 

1  Marshall,  op.  cit.  pp.  So  sq.  130. 


138  PASTORAL   SACRAMENTS  chap. 

then  applies  it  individually.  On  the  children  he  makes 
a  small  rinof  of  blood  over  the  lower  end  of  the  breast 
bone,  on  women  and  girls  he  makes  a  mark  above  the 
breasts,  and  the  men  he  touches  on  each  shoulder. 
He  then  proceeds  to  explain  the  ceremony,  and  to 
exhort  the  people  to  show  kindness.  .  .  .  When  this 
discourse,  which  is  at  times  of  great  length,  is  over, 
the  people  rise,  each  places  a  leaf  on  or  by  the  circle 
of  stones,  and  then  they  depart  with  signs  of  great  joy. 
The  lamb's  skull  is  hung  on  a  tree  near  the  stones, 
and  its  flesh  is  eaten  by  the  poor.  This  ceremony  is 
observed  on  a  small  scale  at  other  times.  If  a  family 
is  in  any  great  trouble,  through  illness  or  bereavement, 
their  friends  and  neighbours  come  toijether  and  a  lamb 
is  killed  :  this  is  thought  to  avert  further  evil.  The 
same  custom  prevails  at  the  grave  of  departed  friends, 
and  also  on  joyful  occasions,  such  as  the  return  of  a 
son  home  after  a  very  prolonged  absence."^  The 
sorrow  thus  manifested  by  the  people  at  the  annual 
slaughter  of  the  lamb  clearly  indicates  that  the  lamb 
slain  is  a  divine  animal,  whose  death  is  mourned  by 
his  worshippers,-  just  as  the  death  of  the  sacred 
buzzard  was  mourned  by  the  Californians  and  the 
death  of  the  Theban  ram  by  the  Egyptians.  The 
smearing  each  of  the  worshippers  with  the  blood  of 
the  lamb  is  a  form  of  communion  with  the  divinity  ;  ^ 
the  vehicle  of  the  divine  life  is  applied  externally 
instead  of  being  taken  internally,  as  when  the  blood  is 
drunk  or  the  flesh  eaten. 


^  R.    W.    P'elkin,    "  Notes    on    the  as  a  regular  article  of  food  (Felkin,  op. 

Madi  or  Moru  tribe  of  Central  Africa,"  cit.  p.    307),   is  not    inconsistent   with 

Proceedings    of    the    Royal    Society    of  the  original  sanctity  of  the  sheep. 
Edinburgh,  xii.  (1882-84)  p.  336  sq.     j 

^  The  fact   that   the   flesh   of  sheep  3  See  W.  R.  Smith,  Religion  of  the 

appears  to   be   now  eaten  by  the  tribe  Semites,  i.  p.  325  sq. 


Ill  COMMUNION  WITH  SNAKE  i39 


The  form  of  communion  in  which  the  sacred 
animal  is  taken  from  house  to  house,  that  all  may 
enjoy  a  share  of  its  divine  influence,  has  been 
exemplified  by  the  Gilyak  custom  of  promenading  the 
bear  through  the  village  before  it  is  slain.  A  similar 
form  of  communion  with  the  sacred  snake  is  observed 
by  a  Snake  tribe  in  the  Punjaub.  Once  a  year  in  the 
month  of  September  the  snake  is  worshipped  by  all 
castes  and  religions  for  nine  days  only.  At  the  end  of 
August  the  Mirasans,  especially  those  of  the  Snake 
tribe,  make  a  snake  of  dough  which  they  paint  black 
and  red,  and  place  on  a  winnowing  basket.  This 
basket  they  carry  round  the  village,  and  on  entering 
any  house  they  say — 

"  God  be  with  you  all ! 
May  every  ill  be  far ! 
May  our  patron's  (Gugga's)  word  thrive  !  " 

They  then  present  the  basket  with  the  snake,  saying — 

"  A  small  cake  of  flour  : 
A  little  bit  of  butter  : 
If  you  obey  the  snake, 
You  and  yours  shall  thrive  ! " 

Strictly  speaking,  a  cake  and  butter  should  be  given, 
but  it  is  seldom  done.  Every  one,  however,  gives 
something,  generally  a  handful  of  dough  or  some  corn. 
In  houses  where  there  is  a  new  bride  or  whence  a  bride 
has  gone,  or  where  a  son  has  been  born,  it  is  usual  to 
give  a  rupee  and  a  quarter,  or  some  cloth.  Sometimes 
the  bearers  of  the  snake  also  sing — 

"  Give  the  snake  a  piece  of  cloth. 
And  he  will  send  a  lively  bride." 

When  every  house  has  been  thus  visited,  the  dough 
snake  is  buried  and  a  small  grave  is  erected  over  it. 
Hither  during  the  nine  days  of  September  the  women 


I40  HUNTING    THE    WREN  chap. 

come  to  worship.  They  bring  a  basin  of  curds,  a 
small  portion  of  which  they  offer  at  the  snake's  grave, 
kneeling  on  the  ground  and  touching  the  earth  with 
their  foreheads.  Then  they  go  home  and  divide  the 
rest  of  the  curds  among  the  children.  Here  the 
dough  snake  is  clearly  a  substitute  for  a  real  snake. 
This  is  proved  by  the  fact  that  in  districts  where 
snakes  abound  the  worship  is  offered,  not  at  the 
grave  of  the  dough  snake,  but  in  the  jungles  where 
snakes  are  known  to  be.  Besides  this  yearly  worship 
performed  by  all  the  people,  the  members  of  the  Snake 
tribe  worship  in  the  same  way  every  morning  after  a 
new  moon.  The  Snake  tribe  is  not  uncommon  in  the 
Punjaub.  Members  of  it  will  not  kill  a  snake  and 
they  say  that  its  bite  does  not  hurt  them.  If  they 
find  a  dead  snake,  they  put  clothes  on  it  and  give  it  a 
regular  funeral.^ 

Ceremonies  closely  analogous  to  this  Indian  worship 
of  the  snake  have  survived  in  Europe  into  recent 
times,  and  doubtless  date  from  a  very  primitive 
paganism.  The  best-known  example  is  the  "  hunting 
of  the  wren."  By  many  European  peoples — the 
ancient  Greeks  and  Romans,  the  modern  Italians, 
Spaniards,  French,  Germans,  Dutch,  Danes,  Swedes, 
English,  and  Welsh  —  the  wren  has  been  designated 
the  king,  the  little  king,  the  king  of  birds,  the  hedge 
king,  etc.,'-  and  has  been  reckoned  amongst  those 
birds  which  it  is  extremely  unlucky  to  kill.  In 
England  it  is  thought  that  if  any  one  kills  a  wren 
or  harries  its  nest,  he  will  infallibly  break  a  bone  or 

*  Panjab  Notes  and  Queries,  ii.   No.  Fmaie  populaire  de  la  France,  ii.  288 

555.  sqq.     The  names  for  it  are  ^o.aCki<jKo%, 

'^  See    Brand,    Popular   Antiquities,  regitlus,  rex  avitttn  (Pliny,  Nat.  Hist. 

iii.  I95.f;7.,  Bohn'sed.;  Swainson, /i'/X'-  viii.  90;  x.  203),  re  di  siepe,  reyczitelo, 

lore  of  British  Birds,"^.  36  ;  E.  Rollanrl,  roitelet,  roi  des  oiseanx,  Zaunkonig,  etc. 


Ill  HUNTING   THE   WREN  141 

meet  with  some  dreadful  misfortune  within  the  year ;  ^ 
sometimes  it  is  thought  that  the  cows  will  give  bloody 
milk.-  In  Scotland  the  wren  is  called  "the  Lady  of 
Heaven's  hen,"  and  boys  say — 

"  Malisons,  malisons,  mair  than  ten, 
That  harry  the  Ladye  of  Heaven's  hen  !  "  3 

At  Saint  Donan,  in  Brittany,  people  believe  that  if 
children  touch  the  young  wrens  in  the  nest,  they  will 
suffer  from  the  fire  of  St.  Lawrence,  that  is,  from 
pimples  on  the  face,  legs,  etc.*  In  other  parts  of 
France  it  is  believed  that  if  a  person  kills  a  wren  or 
harries  its  nest,  his  house  will  be  struck  by  lightning, 
or  that  the  fingers  with  which  he  did  the  deed  will 
shrivel  up  and  drop  off,  or  at  least  be  maimed,  or  that 
his  cattle  will  suffer  in  their  feet.^  Notwithstanding 
such  beliefs,  the  custom  of  annually  killing  the  wren 
has  prevailed  widely  both  in  this  country  and  in 
France.  In  the  Isle  of  Man  last  century  the  custom 
was  observed  on  Christmas  Eve  or  rather  Christmas 
morning.  On  the  24th  of  December,  towards  evening, 
all  the  servants  got  a  holiday ;  they  did  not  go  to  bed 
all  night,  but  rambled  about  till  the  bells  rang  in  all 
the  churches  at  midnight.  When  prayers  were  over, 
they  went  to  hunt  the  wren,  and  having  found  one 
of  these  birds  they  killed  it  and  fastened  it  to  the  top 
of  a  long  pole  with  its  wings  extended.  Thus  they 
carried  it  in  procession  to  every  house  chanting  the 
following  rhyme— 

"  We  hunted  the  wren  for  Robin  the  Bobbin, 
We  hunted  the  wren  for  Jack  of  the  Can, 
We  hunted  the  wren  for  Robin  the  Bobbin, 
We  hunted  the  wren  for  every  one." 

1  Brand,    Popular    Antiquities,    iii.  *   P.    Sebillot,    Traditions   et  Sufer- 
154.  stitions  de  la  Haute  Bretagne,  ii.  214. 

2  Chambers,  Popular  Rhymes  of  Scot-  ^  Rolland,     op.     cit.      ii.     294     sq. ; 
land^  p.  1 88.                   ^  lb.  p.  1S6.  Sebillot,  I.e.;  Swainson,  op.  cit.  p.  42. 


142  HUNTING    THE   WREN  chap. 

After  going  from  house  to  house  and  collecting  all  the 
money  they  could,  they  laid  the  wren  on  a  bier  "  with 
the  utmost  solemnity,  singing  dirges  over  her  in  the 
Manks  language,  which  they  call  her  knell ;  after 
w^iich  Christmas  begins."  After  the  burial  the  com- 
pany outside  the  churchyard  formed  a  circle  and 
danced  to  music.  About  the  middle  of  the  present 
century  the  burial  of  the  wren  took  place  in  the 
Isle  of  Man  on  St.  Stephen's  Day  (December  26th). 
Boys  went  from  door  to  door  with  a  wren  suspended 
by  the  legs  in  the  centre  of  two  hoops  which  crossed 
each  other  at  right  angles  and  were  decorated  with 
evergreens  and  ribbons.  The  bearers  sang  certain 
lines  in  which  reference  was  made  to  boiling  and 
eating  the  bird.  If  at  the  close  of  the  song  they 
received  a  small  coin,  they  gave  in  return  a  feather  of 
the  wren  ;  so  that  before  the  end  of  the  day  the  bird 
often  hung  almost  featherless.  The  wren  was  then 
buried,  no  longer  in  the  churchyard,  but  on  the  sea- 
shore or  in  some  waste  place.  The  feathers  dis- 
tributed were  preserved  with  religious  care,  it  being 
believed  that  every  feather  was  an  effectual  pre- 
servative from  shipwreck  for  a  year,  and  a  fisherman 
would  have  been  thought  very  foolhardy  who  had  not 
one  of  them.^ 

In  Ireland  the  "hunting  of  the  wren  "  still  takes 
place  in  parts  of  Leinster  and  Connaught.  On 
Christmas  Day  or  St.  Stephen's  Day  the  boys  hunt 
and  kill  the  wren,  fasten  it  in  the  middle  of  a  mass 
of  holly  and  ivy  on  the  top  of  a  broomstick,  and  on  St. 
Stephen's  Day  go  about  with  it  from  house  to  house, 
singing — 

1  G.  Waldron,  Description  of  the  Isle  of  Man  (reprinted  for  the  Manx  Society, 
Douglas,  1865),  p.  49  sqq.;  J.  'J'rain,  Account  of  tlie  Isle  of  Man,  ii.  124  sqq.  141. 


Ill  HUNTING   THE   WREN  I43 

"  The  wren,  the  wren,  the  king  of  all  birds, 
St.  Stephen's  Day  was  caught  in  the  furze  ; 
Although  he  is  little,  his  family  's  great, 
I  pray  you,  good  landlady,  give  us  a  treat." 

Money  or  food  (bread,  butter,  eggs,  etc.)  were  given 
them,  upon  which  they  feasted  in  the  evening. 
Sometimes  in  Ireland,  as  in  the  Isle  of  Man,  the  bird 
was  hung  by  the  leg  in  the  centre  of  two  hoops 
crossing  each  other  at  right  angles.^  In  Essex  a 
similar  custom  used  to  be  observed  at  Christmas, 
and  the  verses  sung  by  the  boys  were  almost  identical 
with  those  sung  in  Ireland.^  In  Pembrokeshire  a 
wren,  called  the  King,  used  to  be  carried  about  on 
Twelfth  Day  in  a  box  with  glass  windows  surmounted 
by  a  wheel,  from  which  hung  various  coloured  ribbons. 
The  men  and  boys  who  carried  it  from  house  to  house 
sang  songs,  in  one  of  which  they  wished  "joy,  health, 
love,  and  peace  "  to  the  inmates  of  the  house."  ^ 

In  the  first  half  of  this  century  similar  customs 
were  still  observed  in  various  parts  of  the  south  of 
France.  Thus  at  Carcassone,  every  year  on  the  first 
Sunday  of  December  the  young  people  of  the  street 
Saint  Jean  used  to  go  out  of  the  town  armed  with 
sticks,  with  which  they  beat  the  bushes,  looking  for 
wrens.  The  first  to  strike  down  one  of  these  birds 
was  proclaimed  King.  Then  they  returned  to  the 
town  in  procession,  headed  by  the  King,  who  carried 
the  wren  on  a  pole.  On  the  evening  of  the  last  day 
of  the  year  the  King  and  all  who  had  hunted  the  wren 
marched  through  the  streets  of  the  town  with  torches 
and  music.     At  the  door  of  every  house  they  stopped, 

1  Brand,     Popular    Antiquities,    iii.  May    1884,    p.    332  ;    Dyer,    British 

195  ;    Swainson,    Folk-lore  of  British  Popular  Customs,  p.  497. 
Birds,     p.    36     sq.',     Rolland,     Faune  ^  Henderson,  Folk-lore  of  the  North- 

populaire  de  la  Fi-ance,   ii.    297  ;  Pro-  em  Counties,  p.   125. 
fessor  W.  Ridgeway  in  Academy,  loth  '^  Swainson,  op.  cit.  p.  40  sq. 


144  HUNTING   THE   WREN  chap. 

and  one  of  them  wrote  with  chalk  on  the  door  vive  le 
roi !  with  the  number  of  the  year  which  was  about 
to  begin.  On  the  morning  of  Twelfth  Day  the  King 
again  marched  in  procession  with  great  pomp,  wearing 
a  crown  and  a  blue  mantle  and  carrying  a  sceptre.  In 
front  of  him  was  borne  the  wren  fastened  to  the  top  of 
a  pole,  which  was  adorned  with  a  wreath  of  olive,  oak, 
and  mistletoe.  After  hearing  high  mass  in  the  church, 
surrounded  by  his  officers  and  guards,  he  visited  the 
bishop,  mayor,  magistrates,  and  the  chief  inhabitants, 
collecting  money  to  defray  the  expenses  of  the  royal 
banquet  which  took  place  in  the  evening.^  At  En- 
traigues  men  and  boys  used  to  hunt  the  wren  on 
Christmas  Eve.  When  they  caught  one  alive  they 
presented  it  to  the  priest,  who,  after  the  midnight 
mass,  set  the  bird  free  in  the  church.  At  Mirabeau 
the  priest  blessed  the  bird.  If  the  men  failed  to  catch 
a  wren  and  the  women  succeeded  in  doing  so,  the 
women  had  the  right  to  mock  and  insult  the  men,  and 
to  blacken  their  faces  with  mud  and  soot,  if  they 
caught  them.^  At  La  Ciotat,  near  Marseilles,  a  largfe 
body  of  men  armed  with  swords  and  pistols  used  to 
hunt  the  wren  every  year  about  the  end  of  December. 
When  a  wren  was  caught  it  was  hung  on  the  middle 
of  a  pole  which  two  men  carried,  as  if  it  were  a  heavy 
burden.  Thus  they  paraded  round  the  town ;  the 
bird  was  weighed  in  a  great  pair  of  scales  ;  and  then 
the  company  sat  down  to  table  and  made  merry,^ 

1  Rolland,  op.  at.  ii.  295  sq. ;  J.  W.  young.  These  they  carry  in  a  basket 
\\hAi,  Beiti-iige  ziir  deutscheji  Mytkologie,  from  house  to  house  in  the  village  and 
ii.  437  sq.  show  them  to  the  housewives,  while 
'^  Rolland,  op.  cit.  ii.  296  sq.  one  of  the  children  sings  some  doggerel 
3  Brand's  Popular  Antiquities,  iii.  lines  containing  a  threat  that,  if  a 
198.  The  "hunting  of  the  wren"  present  is  not  given,  the  hens,  chickens, 
may  be  compared  with  a  Swedish  and  eggs  will  fall  a  prey  to  the  mag- 
custom.  On  the  1st  of  May  children  pie.  They  receive  bacon,  eggs,  millc, 
rob  the  magpies'  nests  of  both  eggs  and  etc.,  upon  which  they  afterwards  feast. 


MAN  IN  COW-SKIN  i45 


The  parallelism  between  this  custom  of  "hunting 
the  wren  "  and  some  of  those  we  have  considered, 
especially  the  Gilyak  procession  with  the  bear,  and 
the  Indian  one  with  the  snake,  seems  too  close  to  allow 
us  to  doubt  that  they  all  belong  to  the  same  circle  of 
ideas.  The  worshipful  animal  is  killed  with  special 
solemnity  once  a  year;  and  before  or  immediately  after 
death,  he  is  promenaded  from  door  to  door,  that  each 
of  his  worshippers  may  receive  a  portion  of  the  divine 
virtues  that  are  supposed  to  emanate  from  the  dead  or 
dying  god.  Religious  processions  of  this  sort  must 
have  had  a  great  place  in  the  ritual  of  European 
peoples  in  prehistoric  times,  if  we  may  judge  from  the 
numerous  traces  of  them  which  have  survived  in  folk- 
custom.  A  well-preserved  specimen  is  the  follow- 
ing, which  survived  in  the  Highlands  of  Scotland 
and  in  St.  Kilda  down  to  the  latter  half  of  last 
century.  "  On  the  evening  before  New  Year's  Day, 
it  is  usual  for  the  cowherd  and  the  young  people 
to  meet  toeether,  and  one  of  them  is  covered  with  a 
cow's  hide.  The  rest  of  the  company  are  provided 
with  staves,  to  the  end  of  which  bits  of  raw  hide  are 
tied.  The  person  covered  with  the  hide  runs  thrice 
round  the  dwelling-house,  deiseil — i.e.  according  to  the 
course  of  the  sun  ;  the  rest  pursue,  beating  the  hide 
with  their  staves,  and  crying  [here  follows  the  Gaelic], 
'  Let  us  raise  the  noise  louder  and  louder  ;  let  us  beat 
the    hide.'     They    then    come    to    the    door   of  each 


L.    Lloyd,    Peasant  Life    in    Sweden,  dead  swallows  and  crows  or  effigies  of 

p.  237  sq.     The  resemblance  of  such  them.      In  modern  Greece  it  is  said  to 

customs   to  the   "swallow  song"  and  be  still  customaiy  for  children  on   ist 

"crow  song"  of  the  ancient  Greeks  (on  March  to  go  about  the  streets  singing 

which  see  Athenaeus,  pp.  359,  360)  is  spring   songs  and    carrying    a  wooden 

obvious  and  has  been  remarked  before  swallow,    which   is   kept   turning  on  a 

now.       Probably  the   Greek    swallow-  cylinder.    Qximm.,  Deutsche I\Iythologie,^ 

singers  and  crow-singers  carried  about  ii.    636. 

VOL.   II  L 


146  MAN  IX  COW-SKIN  chap. 

dwelling-house,  and  one  of  them  repeats  some  verses 
composed  for  the  purpose.  When  admission  is  granted, 
one  of  them  pronounces  within  the  threshold  the 
beaiinachadtJmrlair,  or  verses  by  which  he  pretends  to 
draw  down  a  blessing  upon  the  whole  family  [here 
follows  the  Gaelic],  '  May  God  bless  this  house  and 
all  that  belongs  to  it,  cattle,  stones,  and  timber!  In 
plenty  of  meat,  of  bed  and  body-clothes,  and  health  of 
men,  may  it  ever  abound  !  '  Then  each  burns  in  the 
fire  a  little  bit  of  hide  which  is  tied  to  the  end  of  the 
staff.  It  is  applied  to  the  nose  of  every  person  and 
domestic  animal  that  belongs  to  the  house.  This,  they 
imagine,  will  tend  much  to  secure  them  from  diseases 
and  other  misfortunes  during  the  ensuing  year.  The 
whole  of  the  ceremony  is  called  colluinn,  from  the 
great  noise  which  the  hide  makes."  ^  From  another 
authority,-^  we  learn  that  the  hide  of  which  pieces  were 
burned  in  each  house  and  applied  to  the  inmates  was 
the  breast  part  of  a  sheep-skin.  Formerly,  perhaps, 
pieces  of  the  cow-hide  in  which  the  man  was  clad  were 
detached  for  this  purpose,  just  as  in  the  Isle  of  Man  a 
feather  of  the  wren  used  to  be  given  to  each  household. 
Similarly,  as  we  have  seen,  the  human  victim  whom 
the  K  bonds  slew  as  a  divinity  was  taken  from  house 
to  house,  and  every  one  strove  to  obtain  a  relic  of 
his  sacred  person.  Such  customs  are  only  another 
form  of  that  communion  with  the  deity  which  is 
attained  most  completely  by  eating  the  body  and 
drinking  the  blood  of  the  god. 

1  John  Ramsay,  Scotland  and  Scots-  Theodore,"  quoted  by  Kemble,  Saxons 

vien  in  the  Eii^htcenth  Century,  ii.  438  /;/  England,  i.  525  ;   Elton,  Origins  of 

s<j.  ;    cp.    Chambers,    Popular  R]iy)iics  English  History,  p.    41 1;    '^  Si  qiiis  in 

of  Scotland,  p.  166  sq.;   Samuel  John-  Kal.  Janiiar.  in  cervulo  vel  vitnlavadit, 

son,  Journey  to  the  Westerti  Islands  of  id  est  in  fe7-aru!ii  habitus  se  comnnini- 

Scotland,    p.    228    sq.    (first    American  cant,  et  vestiuntur  pcllilms  pectidum  ct 

edition,  l8io).      The  custom  is  clearly  assuniunt  capita  bestiarum,  etc. 
referred    to    in    the     "  Penitential    of  -  Chambers,  I.e. 


in  ANIMALS   LED   ABOUT  I47 

In  the  "  hunting  of  the  wren,"  and  the  procession 
with  the  man  clad  in  a  cow -skin,  there  is  nothing  to 
show  that  the  customs  in  question  have  any  relation 
to  agriculture.  So  far  as  appears,  they  may  date  from 
the  pre-agricultural  era  when  animals  were  revered  as 
divine  in  themselves,  not  merely  as  divine  because  they 
embodied  the  corn-spirit  ;  and  the  analogy  of  the 
Gilyak  procession  of  the  bear,  and  the  Indian  proces- 
sion of  the  snake  is  in  favour  of  assigning  the  corre- 
sponding European  customs  to  this  very  early  date. 
On  the  other  hand,  there  are  certain  European  pro- 
cessions of  animals,  or  of  men  disguised  as  animals, 
which  may  possibly  be  purely  agricultural  in  their 
origin  ;^  in  other  words,  the  animals  which  figure  in 
them  may  have  been  from  the  first  nothing  but  repre- 
sentatives of  the  corn-spirit  conceived  in  animal  shape. 
But  it  is  at  least  equally  possible  that  these  processions 
originated  in  the  pre-agricultural  era,  and  have  only 
received  an  agricultural  tinge  from  the  environment 
in  which  they  have  so  long  survived.  But  the  ques- 
tion is  an  obscure  and  difficult  one,  and  cannot  be 
here  discussed. 


1  Such  are  the  Bohemian  processions  if  the  flax,  the  corn,  and  the  vegetables 
at  the  Carnival  when  a  man  called  the  are  to  grow  well.  The  higher  they 
Shrovetide  Bear,  swathed  from  head  to  leap  the  better  will  be  the  crops.  Some- 
foot  in  peas  -  straw  and  sometimes  times  the  women  pull  out  some  of  the 
wearing  a  bear's  mask,  is  led  from  straw  in  which  the  Shrovetide  Bear  is 
house  to  house.  He  dances  with  the  swathed,  and  put  it  in  the  nests  of  the 
women  of  the  house,  and  collects  money  geese  and  fowls,  believing  that  this  will 
and  food.  Then  they  go  to  the  ale-  make  them  lay  well.  Reinsberg- 
house,  where  all  the  peasants  assemble  Diiringsfeld,  Fest  -  Kalendei-  aits  B'uh- 
with  their  wives.  For  at  the  Carnival,  ;««/,  pp.  49-52.  On  similar  customs, 
especially  on  Shrove  Tuesday,  it  is  see  W.  Mannhardt,  ^.  /F".  A  pp.  183- 
necessary  that  every  one  should  dance,  200. 


148  TRANSFERENCE   OF  ILLS 


§  13. — Transference  of  evil 

The  custom  of  killing  the  god  has  now  been 
proved  to  have  been  practised  by  peoples  in  the  hunt- 
ing, pastoral,  and  agricultural  stages  of  society,  and  the 
various  reasons  for  observing  the  custom  have  been 
explained.  One  aspect  of  the  custom  still  remains  to 
be  noticed.  The  accumulated  misfortunes  and  sins  of 
the  whole  people  are  sometimes  laid  upon  the  dying 
god,  who  is  supposed  to  bear  them  away  for  ever,  leav- 
ing the  people  innocent  and  happy.  The  notion  that 
we  can  transfer  our  pains  and  griefs  to  some  other 
being  who  will  bear  them  in  our  stead  is  familiar  to 
the  savage  mind.  It  arises  from  a  very  obvious  con- 
fusion between  the  physical  and  the  mental.  Because 
it  is  possible  to  transfer  a  load  of  wood,  stones,  or 
what  not,  from  our  own  back  to  the  back  of  another, 
the  savage  fancies  that  it  is  equally  possible  to  transfer 
the  burden  of  his  pains  and  sorrows  to  another,  who  will 
suffer  them  in  his  stead.  Upon  this  idea  he  acts,  and 
the  result  is  an  endless  number  of  often  very  unamiable 
devices  for  putting  off  upon  some  one  else  the  trouble 
which  a  man  shrinks  from  bearing  himself.  Such 
devices  are  amongst  the  most  familiar  facts  in  folk- 
lore ;  but  for  the  benefit  of  readers  who  are  not  pro- 
fessed students  of  folk-lore,  a  few  illustrations  may  be 
given. 

It  is  not  necessary  that  the  pain  or  trouble  should 
be  transferred  from  the  sufferer  to  a  person  ;  it  may 
equally  well  be  transferred  to  an  animal  or  a  thing, 
though  in  the  last  case  the  thing  is  often  only  a 
vehicle  to  convey  the  trouble  to  the  first  person 
who  touches  it.      In  some  of  the  East  Indian  islands 


in  TRANSFERENCE   OF  ILLS  149 

epilepsy  is  believed  to  be  cured  by  striking  the  patient 
on  the  face  with  the  leaves  of  certain  trees  and  then 
throwing  the  leaves  away.     The  epilepsy  is  believed 
to    have   passed   into  the    leaves,   and    to   have  been 
thrown   away   with   them/     To   cure  toothache  some 
of  the  Australian  blacks  apply  a  heated  spear- thrower 
to  the  cheek.     The  spear-thrower  is  then  cast  away, 
and  the  toothache  goes  with  it,  in  the  shape  of  a  black 
stone  called  karriitch.     Stones  of  this  kind  are  found 
in    old    mounds    and   sandhills.       They    are    carefully 
collected  and  thrown  in   the  direction  of  enemies,  in 
order  to  give  them  toothache."     When  a  Moor  has 
a  headache,  he  will  sometimes  take  a  lamb  or  a  goat 
and  beat  it  till  it  falls  down,  believing  that  the  head- 
ache will  thus  be  transferred  to  the  animal.^     After  an 
illness,  a  Bechuana  king  seated  himself  upon  an  ox 
which    lay    stretched    on    the    ground.       The    native 
doctor    next   poured    water   on    the    king's    head    till 
it  ran   down  over  his  body.     Then  the  head  of  the 
ox  was  held  in  a  vessel  of  water  till  the  animal  ex- 
pired ;  whereupon  the  doctor  declared,  and  the  people 
believed,  that  the  ox  died  of  the  king's  disease,  which 
had  been  transferred  to  it  from  the  king.^    Amongst  the 
Malagasy  the  vehicle  for  carrying  away  evils  is  called 
2.faditra.     "  The  faditra  is  anything  selected  by  the 
sikidy  [divining-board]  for  the  purpose  of  taking  away 
any  hurtful  evils  or  diseases  that  might  prove  injurious 
to  an  individual's  happiness,  peace,  or  prosperity.    The 
faditra  may   be  either  ashes,  cut  money,   a  sheep,   a 


1  J.  G.  F.  Riedel,  De  sheik-en  kroes-  ^  Dapper,  Description  de  VAfrique, 
harige  7-assen  tiisschcn  Selebes  en  Papua,  p.  117. 

pp.    266  sq.,  305,  357  sq.;   cp.    id.  pp. 

141,  340.  ■*  John  Campbell,    Travels  in  South 

2  J.  Dawson,  Australian  Aborigines,  Africa  (second  journey),  ii.  207  sq. 
P-  59- 


ISO  TRANSFEREiYCE   OF  ILLS  chap. 

pumpkin,  or  anything  else  the  sikidy  may  choose  to 
direct.  After  the  particular  article  is  appointed,  the 
priest  counts  upon  it  all  the  evils  that  may  prove 
injurious  to  the  person  for  whom  it  is  made,  and 
which  he  then  charges  the  faditra  to  take  away  for 
ever.  If  the  faditra  be  ashes,  it  is  blown,  to  be 
carried  away  by  the  wind.  If  it  be  cut  money,  it 
is  thrown  to  the  bottom  of  deep  water,  or  where 
it  can  never  be  found.  If  it  be  a  sheep,  it  is  carried 
away  to  a  distance  on  the  shoulders  of  a  man,  who 
runs  with  all  his  might,  mumbling  as  he  goes,  as  if 
in  the  greatest  rage  against  the  faditra  for  the  evils 
it  is  bearing  away.  If  it  be  a  pumpkin,  it  is  carried 
on  the  shoulders  to  a  little  distance,  and  there  dashed 
upon  the  ground  with  every  appearance  of  fury  and 
indignation."^  A  Malagasy  was  informed  by  a  diviner 
that  he  was  doomed  to  a  bloody  death,  but  that 
possibly  he  might  avert  his  fate  by  performing  a 
certain  rite.  Carrying  a  small  vessel  full  of  blood 
upon  his  head,  he  was  to  mount  upon  the  back  of  a 
bullock  ;  while  thus  mounted,  he  was  to  spill  the 
blood  upon  the  bullock's  head,  and  then  send  the 
animal  away  into  the  wilderness,  whence  it  might 
never  return.^ 

The  Battas  of  Sumatra  have  a  ceremony  which 
they  call  "  making  the  curse  to  fly  away."  When 
a  woman  is  childless,  a  sacrifice  is  offered  to  the 
gods  of  three  grasshoppers,  representing  a  head 
of  cattle,  a  buffalo,  and  a  horse.  Then  a  swallow 
is    set    free,  with    a   prayer    that    the   curse    may  fall 


1  Ellis,    History   of  Madagascar,   i.  2  gnig^  ^^_   ^jf_   \    ^^^  .   Sibree,  op. 

422  s,/.;    cp.  zV/.  pp.  232,  435,  436  j-</.  ;  a'L    p.    304;     Antananarivo    Annual 

Sibree,    The   Great  African  Island,  p.  and  Madagascar  Magazine,  iii.  263. 
303  -f'/- 


Ill  TRANSFERENCE    OF  ILLS  151 

upon  the  bird  and  fly  away  with  it.^  At  the  cleansing 
of  a  leper  and  of  a  house  suspected  of  being  tainted 
with  leprosy,  the  Jews  let  a  bird  fly  away.'"^  Amongst 
the  Miaotse  of  China,  when  the  eldest  son  of  the 
house  attains  the  age  of  seven  years,  a  ceremony 
called  "driving  away  the  devil"  takes  place.  The 
father  makes  a  kite  of  straw  and  lets  it  fly  away  in 
the  desert,  bearing  away  all  evil  with  it.^  In  Morocco 
most  wealthy  Moors  keep  a  wild  boar  in  their  stables, 
in  order  that  the  jinn  and  evil  spirits  may  be  diverted 
from  the  horses  and  enter  into  the  boar,^  The  Dyaks 
believe  that  certain  men  possess  in  themselves  the 
power  of  neutralising  bad  omens.  So,  when  evil 
omens  have  alarmed  a  farmer  for  the  safety  of  his 
crops,  he  takes  a  small  portion  of  his  farm  produce 
to  one  of  these  wise  men,  who  eats  it  raw  for  a  small 
consideration,  "and  thereby  appropriates  to  himself 
the  evil  omen,  which  in  him  becomes  innocuous,  and 
thus  delivers  the  other  from  the  ban  of  the  peniali 
or  taboo."  ^  In  Travancore,  when  a  Rajah  is  danger- 
ously ill  and  his  life  is  despaired  of,  a  holy  Brahman 
is  brought,  who  closely  embraces  the  King,  and  says, 
"O  King!  I  undertake  to  bear  all  your  sins  and 
diseases.  May  your  Highness  live  long  and  reign 
happily."  Then  the  sin-bearer  is  sent  away  from  the 
country,  and  never  allowed  to  return.*^  Amongst  the 
Burghers  or  Badagas  of  the  Neilgherry  Hills  in 
Southern   India,   when   a   death   has   taken  place,    the 

1  Kodding,         "Die        Batakschen  ^  '^.  Kn^s&e.,  Ethnographische  Pa7-al- 

Gotter,"     Allgenicine     Missions  -  Zeit-  lele  mid  Vergleiche,  p.  29  sq. 

schrift,  xii.  (1885)  478.  *  A.  Leared,  Morocco  and  the  Moors, 

P-  301. 

-  Leviticus  xiv.  7,  53.     For  a  similar  ^  J.  Perham,  "Sea  Dyak  Religion," 

use   ill   Arabia  see   Wellhausen,    Reste  mjourn.  Straits  Branch  Royal  Asiatic 

arabischen  Heidentiiines,  p.    156;    W.  Soc.  No.  10,  p.  232. 

Robertson  Smith,  Religion  of  the  Sem-  ^  S.  Mateer,  Native  Life  in  Travan- 

ites,  i.  402.  core,  p.   136. 


152  TRANSFERENCE   OF  ILLS  chap. 

sins  of  the  deceased  are  laid  upon  a  buffalo  calf.  A 
set  form  of  confession  of  sins,  the  same  for  every  one, 
is  recited  aloud,  then  the  calf  is  set  free,  and  is  never 
afterwards  used  for  common  purposes.  "  The  idea 
of  this  ceremony  is  that  the  sins  of  the  deceased  enter 
the  calf,  or  that  the  task  of  his  absolution  is  laid  on  it. 
They  say  that  the  calf  very  soon  disappears,  and  that 
it  is  never  after  heard  of."^ 

Similar  attempts  to  shift  the  burden  of  disease  and 
sin  from  one's  self  to  another  person,  or  to  an  animal 
or  thing,  have  been  common  in  ancient  and  modern 
Europe.  Grave  writers  of  antiquity  recommended 
that,  if  a  man  be  stung  by  a  scorpion,  he  should  sit 
upon  an  ass  with  his  face  to  the  tail,  or  whisper  in 
the  ear  of  the  ass,  "A  scorpion  has  stung  me";  in 
either  case,  they  thought,  the  pain  would  be  trans- 
ferred from  the  man  to  the  ass.-  A  Roman  cure  for 
fever  was  to  pare  the  patient's  nails,  and  stick  the 
parings  with  wax  upon  a  neighbour's  door  before 
sunrise  ;  the  fever  then  passed  from  the  sick  man 
to  his  neighbour.'^  Similar  devices  must  have  been 
practised  by  the  Greeks  ;  for  in  laying  down  laws 
for  his  ideal  state,  Plato  thinks  it  too  much  to  expect 
that  men  should  not  be  alarmed  at  finding  certain 
wax  figures  adhering  to  their  doors  or  to  the   tomb- 


1  H.  Haikness,  Singular  Aboriginal  the  latter  case  it  is  said  that  the  animal 

Race  of  the  Neilghei-ry  Hills,  p.  133  ;  is  let  loose  "to  become  a  pest."     Per- 

Metz,   77/1?   Tribes  Inhabiting  t/ie  Neil-  haps  the  older  idea  was  that  the  animal 

gherry  Hills,   p.    78;   Jagor,    "  Ueber  carried  away  death  from  the  survivors, 

die     Badagas    im     Nilgiri  -  Gebirge,"  The  idea  of  sin  is  not  primitive. 
Verhandl.    d.    Berlin.    Gesell.  f.    An-  '^  Geoponica,   xiii.    9,    xv.    i  ;  Pliny, 

thropoL    (1876),  p.    196   Si].     For  the  Nat.   Hist,  xxviii.   §   155.     The   auth- 

custom   of  letting  a  bullock  go  loose  orities  for  these  cures  are  respectively 

after  a  death,  compare  also  Grierson,  Apuleius  and  Democritus.      The  latter 

Bihar  Peasant  Life,  p.  409  ;  Ibbetson,  is  probably  not  the  atomic  philosopher. 

Settlement  Report  of  the  Panipat,  Tahsil,  See    Archaeological    Review,     i.     180, 

a7id  Karnal  Parganah  of  the   Karnal  note. 
district  (Allahabad,  1SS3)  p.  137.      In  3  piiny,  Nat.  Hist,  xxviii.  §  86. 


TRANSFERENCE   OF  ILLS  IS3 


Stones  of  their  parents,  or  lying  at  cross-roads/     In 
modern    Europe    there    is    no    end    to    such    devices. 
Thus  the  Orkney  Islanders  will  wash  a  sick  person 
and  then  throw  the  water  down  at  a  gateway,  in  the 
belief  that  the  sickness  will  leave  the  patient  and  be 
transferred  to  the  first  person  who  passes  through  the 
gate.^      A    Bavarian   cure  for  the   fever  is    to   write 
upon  a  piece  of  paper,  "  Fever,  stay  away,  I  am  not  at 
home,"  and  to  put  the  paper  in  some  person's  pocket. 
The  latter  then  catches  the  fever  and  the  patient  is  rid 
of  it.^     Another  cure  is  for  the  patient  to  stick  a  twig 
of  the  elder-tree  in  the  ground  without  speaking.     The 
fever  then  adheres  to  the  twig,  and  whoever  pulls  up 
the  twig  will  catch  the  disease.^     To  get  rid  of  warts, 
take  a  string  and  make  as  many  knots  in  it  as  you 
have    warts.      Then    lay    the    string   under   a    stone. 
Whoever  treads  upon  the  stone  will  get  the  warts, 
and  you  will  be  rid  of  them.^     Gout  may  be  transferred 
from  a  man   to   a  tree   thus.      Pare   the  nails   of  the 
sufferer's  fingers   and  clip  some  hairs  from   his  legs. 
Bore  a  hole  in  an  oak,  stuff  the  nails  and  hair  in  the 
hole,  stop  up  the  hole  again,  and  smear  it  with  cow's 
dung.      If,  for  three  months  afterwards,  the  patient  is 
free  of  gout,   then  the  oak   has   it  in  his  stead.*^     A 
Flemish    cure    for   the    ague    is    to   go    early    in    the 
morning   to   an    old    willow,  tie    three   knots   in    one 
of    its    branches,    say,    "Good-morrow,    Old    One,    I 
give    thee  the  cold,    good -morrow,   Old  One,"   then 
turn   and  run  away  without  looking  round."     A  cure 


1  Plato,  Latvs,  xi.  c.  12,  p.  933  B.  ^  Strackerjan,  Aberglaiibemni  Sagen 

2  Ch.    Rogers,   Social  Life  in  Scot-  aiis  dem  Herzogthum  Oldenburg,  i.  §  85. 
land,  iii.  226.  ^  Carl   Meyer,    Dcr  Aberglatibe   des 

3  G.     Lammert,      Volkmedizin    tmd  Mittelalters,  p.  104. 
medizinischer  Aberglaube  in  Baye>-n,  p.  "^  Grimm,   Deutsche  Mythologie,''  ii. 
264.                            4  //,.  p.  263.  979. 


154  SIN-EATING 


current  in  Sunderland  for  a  cough  is  to  shave  the 
patient's  head  and  hang  the  hair  on  a  bush.  When 
the  birds  carry  the  hair  to  their  nests,  they  will 
carry  the  cough  with  it.  A  Northamptonshire  and 
Devonshire  cure  is  to  put  a  hair  of  the  patient's 
head  between  two  slices  of  buttered  bread  and  eive 
it  to  a  dog.  The  dog  will  get  the  cough  and  the 
patient  will  lose  it.^  In  the  Greek  island  of  Carpathus 
the  priest  ties  a  red  thread  round  the  neck  of  a  sick 
person.  ,  Next  morning  the  friends  of  the  patient 
remove  the  thread  and  go  out  to  the  hillside,  where 
they  tie  the  thread  to  a  tree,  thinking  that  they  thus 
transfer  the  sickness  to  the  tree.^' 

The  old  Welsh  custom  known  as  "  sin-eating  "  is 
another  example  of  the  supposed  transference  of  evil 
from  one  person  to  another.  According  to  Aubrey, 
"  In  the  County  of  Hereford  was  an  old  Custome  at 
funeralls  to  hire  poor  people,  who  were  to  take  upon 
them  all  the  sinnes  of  the  party  deceased.  One  of 
them,  I  remember,  lived  in  a  cottage  on  Rosse-high  way 
(he  was  a  long,  leane,  ugly,  lamentable  poor  raskal). 
The  manner  was  that  when  the  Corps  was  brought  out 
of  the  house  and  layd  on  the  Biere  ;  a  Loafe  of  bread  was 
brought  out,  and  delivered  to  the  Sinne-eater  over  the 
corps,  as  also  a  Mazar-bowle  of  maple  (Gossips  bowle) 
full  of  beer,  which  he  was  to  drinke  up,  and  sixpence  in 
money,  in  consideration  whereof  he  took  upon  him 
(ipso  facto)  all  the  Sinnes  of  the  Defunct,  and  freed  him 
(or  her)  from  walking  after  they  were  dead.  ...  I 
believe    this    custom    was    heretofore    used    over   all 


1  Henderson,      Folk  -  lore      of     the  7ucdicine,  ch.  ii.    Cp.  Grimm,  Deutsche 

Northern    Counties,    p.    143.       CoUec-  Mythologie,^  ii.  c.  36. 
tions  of  cures  by  transference  will  be 

found  in  Strackerjan's  work,  cited  above,  -Blackwood's    Magazine,    February 

i.     §    85    sqq.',    W.    G.    Black,    Folk-  1886,  p.  239. 


SIN-EATING  155 


Wales.  ...  In  North  Wales  the  Sinne-eaters  are  fre- 
quently made  use  of;  but  there,  instead  of  a  Bowie 
of  Beere,  they  have  a  bowle  of  Milke."  ^  According  to 
a  letter  dated  February  i,  17 14-5,  "within  the  memory 
of  our  fathers,  in  Shropshire,  in  those  villages  adjoyning 
to  Wales,  when  a  person  dyed,  there  was  notice  given 
to  an  old  sire  (for  so  they  called  him),  who  presently 
repaired  to  the  place  where  the  deceased  lay,  and  stood 
before  the  door  of  the  house,  when  some  of  the  family 
came  out  and  furnished  him  with  a  cricket,  on  which 
he  sat  down  facing  the  door.  Then  they  gave  him  a 
groat,  which  he  put  in  his  pocket ;  a  crust  of  bread, 
which  he  eat ;  and  a  full  bowle  of  ale,  which  he  drank 
off  at  a  draught.  After  this  he  got  up  from  the  cricket 
and  pronounced,  with  a  composed  gesture,  the  ease 
and  rest  of  the  soul  departed  for  which  he  would  pawn 
his  own  soul.  This  I  had  from  the  ingenious  John 
Aubrey,  Esq."  ^  In  recent  years  some  doubt  has  been 
thrown  on  Aubrey's  account  of  the  custom.^  The 
practice,  however,  is  reported  to  have  prevailed  in 
a  valley  not  far  from  Llandebie  to  a  recent  period. 
An  instance  was  said  to  have  occurred  about  forty 
years  ago.^  Aubrey's  statement  is  supported  by  the 
analogy  of  similar  customs  in  India.     When  the  Rajah 

1  Aahxey,  Remains  of  Centilisme  and  ■*  The  authority  for  the  statement  is 

Judaisme  (Folk-lore  Society,  1881),  p.  a  Mr.  Moggridge,  reported  in  Archae- 
Tc  sq.  ologia    Ca/nbrensis,    second    series,    iii. 

.>  T.     r     ,,     ,  ,.       ■      T    ,     J.     /-  /  330-       But    Mr.    Moggridge    did    not 

^  Bagford's    letter  nr   Le  and  s    Col-  ^^^^^^  ^^.^^^^    ^^^^^^^  knowledge,  and  as 

lectanea,     1.     ^6,     quoted    by    Brand,  ^^  ^^  ^^^^  ^^^^^  .^  ^^^    ^^^^^^1 

Fopu/ar  Antiqznties,  n.  246  sq.,  Bohn  s  ^^^^^^^^  ^^^^^.^^  ^^  pl^^j^^  ^^^^^  ^^^^ 

'  salt  upon  the  breast  of  a  corpse  was  a 

3  In  the  Academy,  13th  Nov.  1875,  p.  survival  of  the  custom  of  "  sin-eating," 

505,  Mr.  D.  Silvan  Evans  stated  that  he  his  evidence    must    be    received  with 

knew  of  no  such  custom  anywhere  in  caution.     He  repeated  his  statement,  in 

Wales ;    and    Miss    Burne    knows    no  somewhat  vaguer  terms,  at  a  meeting 

example  of  it  in   Shropshire.      Burne  of  the  Anthropological  Institute,    14th 

and  Jackson,    Shropshire  Folk-lore,    p.  December  1875.      'ite/oitrii.  Anthrop. 

307  sq.  Inst.  V.  423  sq. 


156  SIN-EATING 


of  Tanjore  died  in  1801,  some  of  his  bones  and  the 
bones  of  the  two  wives,  who  were  burned  with  his 
corpse,  were  ground  to  powder  and  eaten,  mixed  with 
boiled  rice,  by  twelve  Brahmans.  It  was  believed  that 
the  sins  of  the  deceased  passed  into  the  bodies  of 
the  Brahmans,  who  were  paid  for  the  service.^  A 
Brahman,  resident  in  a  village  near  Raipiir,  stated 
that  he  had  eaten  food  (rice  and  milk)  out  of  the  hand 
of  the  dead  Rajah  of  Bilaspur,  and  that  in  consequence 
he  had  been  placed  on  the  throne  for  the  space  of 
a  year.  At  the  end  of  the  year  he  had  been  given 
presents  and  then  turned  out  of  the  territory  and 
forbidden  apparently  to  return.  He  was  an  outcast 
among  his  fellows  for  having  eaten  out  of  a  dead  man's 
hand.-  A  similar  custom  is  believed  to  obtain  amonof 
the  hill  states  about  Kangra,  and  to  have  given  rise 
to  a  caste  of  "  outcaste "  Brahmans.  At  the  funeral 
of  a  Rani  of  Chamba  rice  and  ghi  were  eaten  out 
of  the  hands  of  the  corpse  by  a  Brahman  paid  for 
the  purpose.  Afterwards  a  stranger,  who  had  been 
caught  outside  the  Chamba  territory,  was  given  the 
costly  wrappings  of  the  corpse,  then  told  to  depart 
and  never  show  his  face  in  the  country  again. ^  In 
Oude  when  an  infant  was  killed  it  used  to  be  buried 
in  the  room  in  which  it  had  been  born.  On  the 
thirteenth  day  afterwards  the  priest  had  to  cook  and 
eat  his  food  in  that  room.  By  doing  so  he  was 
supposed  to  take  the  whole  sin  upon  himself  and  to 
cleanse  the  family  from  it.^  At  Utch  Kurgan  in 
Turkistan  Mr.  Schuyler  saw  an  old  man  who  was  said 

1  Dubois,    Moeiirs    des    Peiiples    de  ^  Paujah  Notes  and  Queries,  i.  No. 

rinde,  ii.  32,  674  ;  ii.  No.  559.      Some  of  these  cus- 

toms have  been  aheady  referred  to  in  a 

-  R.  Richardson,  in  Punjab  Notes  different  connection.  See  above,  vol.  i. 
and  Queries,  i.  No.  674.  p.  232.  *  Op.  cit.  iii.  No.  745. 


EXPULSION  OF  EVILS  i57 


to  get  his  living  by  taking  on  himself  the  sins  of 
the  dead  and  thenceforth  devoting  his  life  to  prayer 
for  their  souls/ 


^  14. — Expulsion  of  evils 

These  examples  illustrate  the  primitive  principle  of 
the  transference  of  ills  to  another  person,  animal,  or 
thing.      In  the  instances  cited  the  principle  is  applied 
for  the   benefit  of  individuals   only.       But   analogous 
proceedings   are    employed  by   barbarous  peoples    to 
rid   a   whole    community    of  all    their   troubles    at    a 
blow.     The  frame  of  mind  which  prompts  such  whole- 
sale clearances  of  evil  may  be  described  in  the  language 
of  Mr.  Im  Thurn,  for  though  he  wrote  of  the  Indians 
of  Guiana  in  particular,  his  description  is  capable  of  a 
much  wider  application.      He  says  :  "  Thus  the  whole 
world   of   the    Indian    swarms    with    these   [spiritual] 
beings.      If  by  a  mighty   mental   effort  we  could   for 
a   moment   revert   to    a   similar   mental    position    we 
should  find  ourselves  surrounded  by  a  host  of  possibly 
hurtful   beings,   so    many  in  number  that  to  describe 
them  as  innumerable  would  fall  ridiculously  short  of 
the    truth.      It    is    not   therefore    wonderful    that   the 
Indian  fears  to  move  beyond  the  light  of  his  camp-fire 
after   dark,    or,    if  he    is  obliged   to   do  so,  carries    a 
firebrand    with  him  that  he  may  at  least  see  among 
what    enemies    he   walks ;    nor    is    it    wonderful    that 
occasionally    the    air  round    the  settlement  seems    to 
the  Indian  to  grow  so  full  of  beings  that  a  peaiman 
[sorcerer],    who    is    supposed    to   have    the    power  of 
temporarily  driving  them  away,  is  employed  to  efiect  a 

1  E.  Schuyler,  Tiirkistan^  ii.  28. 


158  OCCASIONAL  EXPULSION  chap. 

general  clearance  of  these  beings,  if  only  for  a  time,"  ^ 
Such  general  clearances  of  evil  influences  may  be 
divided  into  two  classes,  according  as  the  expelled  evils 
are  immaterial  and  invisible  or  are  embodied  in  a 
material  vehicle  or  scapegoat.  The  former  may  be 
called  the  direct  or  immediate  expulsion  of  evils  ;  the 
latter  the  indirect  or  mediate  expulsion,  or  the  expul- 
sion by  scapegoat.  We  begin  with  examples  of  the 
former. 

In  the  island  of  Rook,  between  New  Guinea  and 
New  Britain,  when  any  misfortune  has  happened,  all 
the  people  run  together,  scream,  curse,  howl,  and  beat 
the  air  with  sticks  to  drive  away  the  devil  [Marsdda), 
who  is  supposed  to  be  the  author  of  the  mishap. 
From  the  spot  where  the  mishap  took  place  they  drive 
him  step  by  step  to  the  sea,  and  on  reaching  the  shore 
they  redouble  their  shouts  and  blows  in  order  to  expel 
him  from  the  island.  He  generally  retires  to  the  sea 
or  to  the  island  of  Lottin.'-  The  natives  of  New 
Britain  ascribe  sickness,  drought,  the  failure  of  crops, 
and  in  short  all  misfortunes,  to  the  influence  of  wicked 
spirits.  So  at  times  when  many  people  sicken  and 
die,  as  at  the  beginning  of  the  rainy  season,  all  the 
inhabitants  of  a  district,  armed  with  branches  and 
clubs,  go  out  by  moonlight  to  the  fields,  where  they 
beat  and  stamp  on  the  ground  with  wild  howls  till 
morning,  believing  that  this  drives  away  the  devils.^ 
When  a  village  has  been  visited  by  a  series  of  disasters 
or  a  severe  epidemic,  the  Minahassa  of  Celebes  lay 
the  blame  upon  the  devils  who  are  infesting  the  village 
and  must  be  expelled  from  it.     Accordingly,  early  one 

1  E.  F.  im  Thurn,  Among  the  Indians      der  Insel   Rook,"  Zeitschrift  fiir  allgc- 
of  Gtiiana,  p.  356  sq.  meinc  Ei-dkunde,  N.  F.  iv.  356. 

3   R.    Parkinson,    I  in   Bismarck- Ar- 

2  Paul  Reina,  "  Ueber  die  Bewohner      chipel,  p.  142. 


Ill  OF  EVILS  159 

morning  all  the  people,  men,  women,  and  children, 
quit  their  homes,  carrying  their  household  goods  with 
them,  and  take  up  their  quarters  in  temporary  huts 
which  have  been  erected  outside  the  village.  Here 
they  spend  several  days,  offering  sacrifices  and  pre- 
paring for  the  final  ceremony.  At  last  the  men,  some 
wearino-  masks,  others  with  their  faces  blackened,  and 
so  on,  but  all  armed  with  swords,  guns,  pikes,  or 
brooms,  steal  cautiously  and  silently  back  to  the 
deserted  village.  Then,  at  a  signal  from  the  priest, 
they  rush  furiously  up  and  down  the  streets  and  into 
and  under  the  houses  (which  are  raised  on  piles  above 
the  ground),  yelling  and  striking  on  walls,  doors,  and 
windows,  to  drive  away  the  devils.  Next,  the  priests 
and  the  rest  of  the  people  come  with  the  holy  fire  and 
march  nine  times  round  each  house  and  thrice  round 
the  ladder  that  leads  up  to  it,  carrying  the  fire  with 
them.  Then  they  take  the  fire  into  the  kitchen,  where 
it  must  burn  for  three  days  continuously.  The  devils 
are  now  driven  away,  and  great  and  general  is  the  joy.^ 
The  Alfoers  of  Halmahera  attribute  epidemics  to  the 
devil  who  comes  from  other  villages  to  carry  them  off 
So,  in  order  to  rid  the  village  of  the  disease,  the 
sorcerer  drives  away  the  devil.  From  all  the  villagers 
he  receives  a  cosdy  garment  and  places  it  on  four 
vessels,  which  he  takes  to  the  forest  and  leaves  at  the 
spot  where  the  devil  is  supposed  to  be.  Then  with 
mocking  words  he  bids  the  demon  abandon  the  place. - 

1  [P.    N.   Wilken],  "  De  godsdienst  (1863)    149    sqq.  ;   J.    G.    F.    Riedel, 

en  godsdienstplegtigheden  der  Alfoeren  "  De   Minaljasa  in    1825,"    Tijdschrift 

in  de  Menahassa  op  het  eiland  Celebes,"  voor  Indische    Taal-  Land  en    Volken- 

Tijds.hrift    voor    Ncderlandsch    Indie,  hmde,  xviii.  (1872),  521  sq.     Wilken's 

December    1849,    pp.    392-394;    id.,  first    and   fuller    account    is   reprinted 

"  Bijdragen    tot    de    kennis    van     de  in  Graafland's  De  Minahassa,   i.    117- 

zeden    en   gewoonten  der  Alfoeren    in  120. 

de    Minahassa,"   Mededeelingen   v.    w.  2  Riedel,  "Galelaund  Tobeloresen," 

/lef  Neder/and.   Zendelinggenootsch.  vii.  in  Zeitschrift f.  Ethnologic,  xvii.  (1885) 


i6o  OCCASIONAL   EXPULSION  chap. 

In  the  Key  Islands,  south  of  New  Guinea,  when 
sickness  prevails,  the  people  erect  a  stage  on  the 
shore  and  load  it  with  meat  and  drink.  Then  the 
priest  in  presence  of  the  people  bans  the  spirits  which 
are  causing  the  disease,  whereupon  the  people  run 
back  to  the  village  at  full  speed,  like  fugitives.^ 

In  the  island  of  Nias,  when  a  man  is  seriously  ill 
and  other  remedies  have  been  tried  in  vain,  the  sorcerer 
proceeds  to  exorcise  the  devil  who  is  causing  the  ill- 
ness. A  pole  is  set  up  in  front  of  the  house,  and  from 
the  top  of  the  pole  a  rope  of  palm-leaves  is  stretched 
to  the  roof  of  the  house.  Then  the  sorcerer  mounts 
the  roof  with  a  pig,  which  he  kills  and  allows  to  roll 
from  the  roof  to  the  ground.  The  devil,  anxious  to 
get  the  pig,  lets  himself  down  hastily  from  the  roof  by 
the  rope  of  palm-leaves,  and  a  good  spirit,  invoked  by 
the  sorcerer,  prevents  him  from  climbing  up  again.  If 
this  remedy  fails,  it  is  believed  that  other  devils  must 
still  be  lurking  in  the  house.  So  a  general  hunt  is 
made  after  them.  All  the  doors  and  windows  in  the 
house  are  closed,  except  a  single  dormer-window  in  the 
roof.  The  men,  shut  up  in  the  house,  hew  and  slash 
with  their  swords  right  and  left  to  the  clash  of  gongs 
and  the  rub-a-dub  of  drums.  Terrified  at  this  onslaught 
the  devils  escape  by  the  dormer-window,  and  sliding 
down  the  rope  of  palm-leaves  take  themselves  off.  As 
all  the  doors  and  windows,  except  the  one  m  the  roof, 
are  shut,  the  devils  cannot  eet  into  the  house  aeain. 
In  the  case  of  an  epidemic  the  proceedings  are  similar. 
All  the  gates  of  the  village,  except  one,  are  closed  ; 
every  voice  is   raised,   every  gong  and   drum  beaten. 


82;  G.   A.   Wilken,  Het  Shamanisme  ^  Riedel,    De    sluik-en    kroesharigs 

bij  de  Volken  van  de  Indiscken  Archipel,       rassen  Uisschen   Selebes    en    Papua,  p. 
P-  58.  239. 


Ill  OF  EVILS  i6r 

every  sword  brandished.  Thus  the  devils  are  driven 
out  and  the  last  gate  is  shut  behind  them.  For  eight 
days  thereafter  the  village  is  in  a  state  of  siege,  no  one 
being  allowed  to  enter  it.^  When  cholera  has  broken 
out  in  a  Burmese  village  the  able-bodied  men  scramble 
on  the  roofs  and  lay  about  them  with  bamboos  and  bil- 
lets of  wood,  while  all  the  rest  of  the  population,  old  and 
young,  stand  below  and  thump  drums,  blow  trumpets, 
yell,  scream,  beat  floors,  walls,  tin-pans,  everything  to 
make  a  din.  This  uproar,  repeated  on  three  successive 
nights,  is  thought  to  be  very  effective  in  driving  away 
the  cholera  demons.^  When  small-pox  first  appeared 
amongst  the  Kumis  of  South -Eastern  India,  they 
thought  it  was  a  devil  come  from  Arracan.  The  vil- 
lages were  placed  in  a  state  of  siege,  no  one  being 
allowed  to  leave  or  enter  them.  A  monkey  was  killed 
by  being  dashed  on  the  ground,  and  its  body  was  hung 
at  the  village  gate.  Its  blood,  mixed  with  small  river 
pebbles,  was  sprinkled  on  the  houses,  the  threshold  of 
every  house  was  swept  with  the  monkey's  tail,  and  the 
fiend  was  adjured  to  depart.^  At  Great  Bassam,  in 
Guinea,  the  French  traveller  Hecquard  witnessed  the 
exorcism  of  the  evil  spirit  who  was  believed  to  make 
women  barren.  The  women  who  wished  to  become 
mothers  offered  to  the  fetish  wine-vessels  or  statuettes 
representing  women  suckling  children.  Then  being 
assembled  in  the  fetish  hut,  they  were  sprinkled  with 

1  Nieuwenhuisen      en      Rosenberg,      over    de   godsdienst,    zeden,    enz.    der 

Verslag     ointrent     het     eiland     Nias,       Dajakkers  "  in    Tijdschrift  voor  Neer- 

p.   1165-^.;   Rosenberg,  Der  Malayische      land's  Indie,  viii.  (1846)  dl.  iii.  p.  149. 

Archipel,    p.     174    sq.     Cp.    Chatelin,  9  tt    ,  d   -.•  7     n 

ii.  n    1    r       .       u-     I     fj      TVT-  »  rorbes,   British  Burma,   p.    2"?^  ; 

'   Godsdienst  en  El  geloof  der  JNiassers,  „,  .^    '    „,      _  ■       e^    ''  ■■ 

rr-j    J    -r.  T    ,■    1     n'     1  T      J  anway   \  oe,   I  ne  Biirman,   1.    282,   11. 

lijdschrift  voor  Indisclie  J aal-Land-en  ■'      -r,      •        7^  ■  rr-,7       7         ,■  , 

i^„ii      /      V  •     .,„       T^u      -r.     1  'i-0^sqq.\h2&\.\-!iX\,DteVolkerdesosthchen 

i  otkenkiinde,    xxvi.    139.       1  he   Dyaks  ..^^..      „        ' 

also  drive  the  devil  at  the  point  of  the  '     '   -^   " 

sword  from  a  house  where  there  is  sick-  ^  Lewin,     Wild    Tribes    of    South- 

ness.      See  Hupe,  "  Korte  verhandeling  Eastern  India,  p.  226. 

VOL.   II  M 


1 62  EXPULSION  OF  EVILS  chap. 

rum  by  the  priest,  while  young  men  fired  guns  and 
brandished  swords  to  drive  away  the  demon. ^  When 
sickness  was  prevalent  in  a  Huron  village,  and  all 
other  remedies  had  been  tried  in  vain,  the  Indians  had 
recourse  to  the  ceremony  called  Lonouyi^oya,  "which 
is  the  principal  invention  and  most  proper  means,  so 
they  say,  to  expel  from  the  town  or  village  the  devils 
and  evil  spirits  which  cause,  induce,  and  import  all  the 
maladies  and  infirmities  which  they  suffer  in  body  and 
mind."  Accordingly,  one  evening  the  men  would 
begin  to  rush  like  madmen  about  the  village,  breaking 
and  upsetting  whatever  they  came  across  in  the  wig- 
wams. They  threw  fire  and  burning  brands  about  the 
streets,  and  all  night  long  they  ran  howling  and  singing 
without  cessation.  Then  they  all  dreamed  of  something, 
a  knife,  dog,  skin,  or  whatever  it  might  be,  and  when 
morning  came  they  went  from  wigwam  to  wigwam 
asking  for  presents.  These  they  received  silently,  till 
the  particular  thing  was  given  them  which  they  had 
dreamed  about.  On  receiving  it  they  uttered  a  cry  of 
joy  and  rushed  from  the  hut,  amid  the  congratulations 
of  all  present.  The  health  of  those  who  received 
what  they  had  dreamed  of  was  believed  to  be  assured  ; 
whereas  those  who  did  not  get  what  they  had  set  their 
hearts  upon  regarded  their  fate  as  sealed." 

The   observance   of  such   ceremonies,   from  being 

^  Hecquard,  Reise  an  die  Kiiste  und  ably  enigmas  were  originally  a  kind  of 

in  das  Innere  von  West  Afrika,  p.  43.  divination.    Cp.  Vambery,  Das  Tiirketi- 

2  Sagard,  Le  Grand  Voyage  du  Pays  volk,    p.    232    sq. ;     Riedel,    De   sluik- 

des  Hurons,-^.  2']()  sqq.  (195  sq.   of  the  en  kroesha^-ige  rassen,   etc.   p.    267  sq. 

Paris  reprint).      Compare  Relations  des  In  Bolang  Mongondo  (Celebes)   riddles 

Jesnites,    1639,   pp.    88-92    (Canadian  may  never  be  asked  except  when  there 

reprint),    from   which    it    appears    that  is    a    corpse    in    the    village.       N.    P. 

each  man  demanded  the  subject  of  his  Wilken    en  J.   A.    Schwarz,    "  AUerlei 

dream  in  the  form  of  a  riddle,  which  over    het    land   en   volk   van   Bolaang 

the  hearers  tried  to  solve.      The  pro-  Mongondou,"  Mededeeli7ige7i  van  wege 

pounding  of  riddles   is  not  uncommon  /letNederlandsch.  Zendelinggenootschap, 

as  a  superstitious  observance.       Prob-  xi.  (1867)  p.  357. 


BECOMES  PERIODIC  163 


occasional  tends  to  become  periodic.  It  comes  to  be 
thought  desirable  to  have  a  general  riddance  of  evil 
spirits  at  fixed  times,  usually  once  a  year,  in  order 
that  the  people  may  make  a  fresh  start  in  life,  freed 
from  all  the  malignant  influences  which  have  been  long 
accumulating  about  them.  Some  of  the  Australian 
blacks  annually  expelled  the  ghosts  of  the  dead  from 
their  territory.  The  ceremony  was  witnessed  by  the 
Rev.  W.  Ridley  on  the  banks  of  the  river  Barwan.  "A 
chorus  of  twenty,  old  and  young,  were  singing  and 
beating  time  with  boomerangs.  .  .  .  Suddenly,  from 
under  a  sheet  of  bark  darted  a  man  with  his  body 
whitened  by  pipeclay,  his  head  and  face  coloured  with 
lines  of  red  and  yellow,  and  a  tuft  of  feathers  fixed  by 
means  of  a  stick  two  feet  above  the  crown  of  his  head. 
He  stood  twenty  minutes  perfectly  still,  gazing  up- 
wards. An  aboriginal  who  stood  by  told  me  he  was 
looking  for  the  ghosts  of  dead  men.  At  last  he  began 
to  move  very  slowly,  and  soon  rushed  to  and  fro  at  full 
speed,  flourishing  a  branch  as  if  to  drive  away  some 
foes  invisible  to  us.  When  I  thought  this  pantomime 
must  be  almost  over,  ten  more,  similarly  adorned,  sud- 
denly appeared  from  behind  the  trees,  and  the  whole 
party  joined  in  a  brisk  conflict  with  their  mysterious 
assailants.  ...  At  last,  after  some  rapid  evolutions  in 
which  they  put  forth  all  their  strength,  they  rested  from 
the  exciting  toil  which  they  had  kept  up  all  night  and 
for  some  hours  after  sunrise :  they  seemed  satisfied 
that  the  ghosts  were  driven  away  for  twelve  months. 
They  were  performing  the  same  ceremony  at  every 
station  along  the  river,  and  I  am  told  it  is  an  annual 
custom."  ^ 

1  The   Rev.    W.    Ridley,  in   J.   D.   Lang's  Qtieensland,  p.  441  ;  cp.  Ridley. 
Kamilaroi,  p.  149. 


i64  PERIODIC  EXPUISION  chap. 

Certain  seasons  of  the  year  mark  themselves  natur- 
ally out  as  appropriate  moments  for  a  general  expulsion 
of  devils.  Such  a  moment  occurs  towards  the  close  of 
an  Arctic  winter,  when  the  sun  reappears  on  the  horizon 
after  an  absence  of  weeks  or  months.  Accordingly,  at 
Point  Barrow,  the  most  northerly  extremity  of  Alaska, 
and  nearly  of  America,  the  Eskimo  choose  the  moment 
of  the  sun's  reappearance  to  hunt  the  mischievous  spirit 
Tuna  from  every  house.  The  ceremony  was  witnessed 
a  few  years  ago  by  the  members  of  the  United  States 
Polar  Expedition,  who  wintered  at  Point  Barrow. 
A  fire  was  built  in  front  of  the  council-house,  and  an 
old  woman  was  posted  at  the  entrance  to  every  iglu 
(Eskimo  house).  The  men  gathered  round  the  council- 
fire,  while  the  young  women  and  girls  drove  the  spirits 
out  of  every  iglu  with  their  knives,  stabbing  viciously 
under  the  bunk  and  deer-skins,  and  calling  upon  Tuna 
to  leave  the  iglu.  When  they  thought  he  had  been 
driven  out  of  every  hole  and  corner,  they  thrust  him 
down  through  the  hole  in  the  floor  and  chased  him 
into  the  open  air  with  loud  cries  and  frantic  gestures. 
Meanwhile  the  old  woman  at  the  entrance  of  the  iorlu 
made  passes  with  a  long  knife  in  the  air  to  keep  him 
from  returning.  Each  party  drove  the  spirit  towards 
the  fire  and  invited  him  to  go  into  it.  All  were  by 
this  time  drawn  up  in  a  semicircle  round  the  fire,  when 
several  of  the  leading  men  made  specific  charges  against 
the  spirit;  and  each  after  his  speech  brushed  his  clothes 
violently,  calling  on  the  spirit  to  leave  him  and  go  into 
the  fire.  Two  men  now  stepped  forward  with  rifles 
loaded  with  blank  cartridges,  while  a  third  brought  a 
vessel  of  urine  and  flung  it  on  the  fire.  At  the  same 
time  one  of  the  men  fired  a  shot  into  the  fire  ;  and  as 
the   cloud   of  steam  rose  it  received  the   other  shot, 


Ill  OF  EVILS  165 

which  was  supposed  to  finish  Tuiia  for  the  time  being.^ 
In  autumn,  when  heavy  gales  are  raging,  the  Eskimo 
of  Baffin  Land  think  that  the  female  spirit  Sedna  dwells 
amongst  them,  and  the  most  powerful  enchanter  is 
employed  to  drive  her  out.  Beside  a  small  hole  in 
the  centre  of  the  floor  a  line  of  seal-skin  is  coiled  up. 
Holding  a  sealing-spear  in  his  left  hand  the  enchanter 
watches  the  hole  in  the  floor.  Another  sorcerer 
sits  in  the  rear  of  the  hut  chanting  songs  to  attract 
Sedna.  Now  she  is  heard  approaching  under  the  floor 
of  the  hut.  When  she  reaches  the  hole  the  enchanter 
strikes  her  with  his  harpoon  and  pays  out  the  line.  A 
severe  struggle  ensues,  but  ultimately  Sedna  flies  to 
her  country,  Adlivun.  The  performance  is  cleverly 
managed.  When  the  harpoon  is  drawn  out  of  the  hole 
it  is  covered  with  blood,  and  the  heavy  breathing  of 
Sedna  can  be  distinctly  heard  under  the  floor.' 

The  Iroquois  inaugurated  the  new  year  in  January, 
February,  or  March  (the  time  varied)  with  a  "  festival 
of  dreams"  like  that  which  the  Hurons  observed  on 
special  occasions.  ^  The  whole  ceremonies  lasted 
several  days,  or  even  weeks,  and  formed  a  kind  of 
Saturnalia.  Men  and  women,  variously  disguised, 
went  from  wigwam  to  wigwam  smashing  and  throwing 
down  whatever  they  came  across.  It  was  a  time  of 
general  licence  ;  the  people  were  supposed  to  be  out 
of  their  senses,  and  therefore  not  to  be  responsible 
for  what  they  did.  Accordingly,  many  seized  the 
opportunity  of  paying  off  old  scores  by  belabouring 
obnoxious  persons,  drenching  them  with  ice-cold 
water,    and   covering   them    with    filth    or    hot    ashes. 

1  Report  of  the  Intei'iiational  Polar  ceedings  and  Tj-ansadions  of  the  Royal 

Expedition    to  Point  Barrow,    Alaska  Society   of  Canada  for    1887,    vol.    v. 

(Washington,  1885),  p.  42  sq.  (Montreal,  1888),  sect.  ii.  36  sq. 

-  Franz  Boas,  "The  Eskimo,"  Pro-  •*  Above,  p.  162. 


1 66  PERIODIC  EXPULSION  chap. 

Others  seized  burning  brands  or  coals  and  flung  them 
at  the  heads  of  the  first  persons  they  met.      The  only 
way  of  escaping  from  these  persecutors  was  to  guess 
what  they  had  dreamed  of.     On  one  day  of  the  festival 
the  ceremony  of  driving  away  evil  spirits  from   the 
village  took  place.     Men  clothed  in  the  skins  of  wild 
beasts,   their   faces  covered  with  hideous  masks,    and 
their  hands  with  the  shell  of  the  tortoise,  went  from 
hut  to  hut  making  frightful  noises  ;  in  every  hut  they 
took  the  fuel  from  the  fire  and  scattered  the  embers 
and    ashes    about    the    floor  with    their   hands.     The 
general  confession  of  sins  which  preceded  the  festival 
was  probably  a  preparation  for  the  public  expulsion  of 
evil  influences  ;  it  was  a  way  of  stripping  the  people  of 
their  moral  burdens,  that  these  might  be  collected  and 
cast  out.     This   New  Year  fes'tival  is  still  celebrated 
by  some  of  the  heathen   Iroquois,  though  it  has  been 
shorn  of  its  former  turbulence.     A  conspicuous  feature 
in  the  ceremony  is  now  the  sacrifice  of  the  White  Dog, 
but  this  appears  to   have  been  added  to  the  festival 
in  comparatively  modern  times,   and   does   not  figure 
in   the    oldest    descriptions   of   the    ceremonies.      We 
shall  return  to  it  later  on.^     A  oreat   annual   festival 
of    the     Cherokee     Indians     was     the     Propitiation, 
"  Cementation,"  or  Purification  festival.     "  It  was  cele- 
brated shortly  after  the  first  new  moon  of  autumn,  and 
consisted  of  a   multiplicity  of  rigorous   rites,    fastings, 
ablutions,    and   purifications.       Among    the   most    im- 
portant   functionaries    on    the    occasion    were    seven 

1  Charlevoix,  Histoire  de  la  Noiivelle  Ethnology  (Washington,   1883),  p.   1 12 

France,  vi.  82  sqq.;  Timothy  Dwight,  sqq.;  Horatio  Hale,  "  Iroquois  sacrifice 

Travels   in  New    England    and   New  of    the   White    Dog,"   American    An- 

York,    iv.     201     sq.',    L.    H.    Morgan,  tiquarian,    vii.    7  sqq.;    W.    M.    Beau- 

Leagne  of  the  Iroquois,  p.  207  sqq. ;  Mrs.  champ,  "Iroquois  White  Dog  feast,"  ib. 

E.  A.  Smith,  "  iVIyths  of  the  Iroquois,"  p.  235  sqq. 
Second  Annual  Report  0/  the  Bureau  of 


Ill  OF  EVILS  167 

exercisers  or  cleansers,  whose  duty  it  was,  at  a  cer- 
tain stage  of  the  proceedings,  to  drive  away  evil,  and 
purify  the  town.  Each  one  bore  in  his  hand  a  white 
rod  of  sycamore.  '  The  leader,  followed  by  the  others, 
walked  around  the  national  heptagon,  and  coming  to 
the  treasure  or  store-house  to  the  west  of  it,  they  lashed 
the  eaves  of  the  roofs  with  their  rods.  The  leader 
then  went  to  another  house,  followed  by  the  others, 
singing,  and  repeated  the  same  ceremony  until  every 
house  was  purified.'  This  ceremony  was  repeated 
daily  during  the  continuance  of  the  festival.  In  per- 
forming their  ablutions  they  went  into  the  water  and 
allowed  their  old  clothes  to  be  carried  away  by  the 
stream,  by  which  means  they  supposed  their  impurities 
removed."  ^ 

In  September  the  Incas  of  Peru  celebrated  a 
festival  called  Situa,  the  object  of  which  was  to  banish 
from  the  capital  and  its  vicinity  all  disease  and 
troubles.  The  festival  fell  in  September  because  the 
rains  begin  about  this  time,  and  with  the  first  rains 
there  was  generally  much  sickness.  As  a  preparation 
for  the  festival  the  people  fasted  on  the  first  day  of 
the  moon  after  the  autumnal  equinox.  Having  fasted 
during  the  day,  and  the  night  being  come,  they  baked 
a  coarse  paste  of  maize.  This  paste  was  made  of  two 
sorts.  One  was  kneaded  with  the  blood  of  children 
aged  five  to  ten  years,  the  blood  being  obtained  by 
bleeding  the  children  between  the  eye-brows.  These 
two  kinds  of  paste  were  baked  separately,  because 
they  were  for  different  uses.  Each  family  assembled 
at  the  house  of  the  eldest  brother  to  celebrate  the 
feast ;   and  those  who  had  no   elder  brother  went   to 

^  Squier's     notes     upon     Bartram's      from  the  MS.  of  Mr.  Payne.     See  above, 
Creek    and    Cherokee    Indians,    p.    78,       p.  75  note. 


1 68  PERIODIC  EXPULSION  chap. 

the  house  of  their  next  relation  of  greater  age.  On 
the  same  night  all  who  had  fasted  during  the  day 
washed  their  bodies,  and  takino^  a  little  of  the  blood- 
kneaded  paste,  rubbed  it  over  their  head,  face,  breast, 
shoulders,  arms,  and  legs.  They  did  this  in  order 
that  the  paste  might  take  away  all  their  infirmities. 
After  this  the  head  of  the  family  anointed  the 
threshold  with  the  same  paste,  and  left  it  there  as  a 
token  that  the  inmates  of  the  house  had  performed 
their  ablutions  and  cleansed  their  bodies.  Meantime 
the  High  Priest  performed  the  same  ceremonies  in  the 
temple  of  the  Sun.  As  soon  as  the  Sun  rose,  all  the 
people  worshipped  and  besought  him  to  drive  all  evils 
out  of  the  city,  and  then  they  broke  their  fast  with  the 
paste  that  had  been  kneaded  without  blood.  When 
they  had  paid  their  worship  and  broken  their  fast, 
which  they  did  at  a  stated  hour,  in  order  that  all  might 
adore  the  Sun  as  one  man,  an  Inca  of  the  blood  royal 
came  forth  from  the  fortress,  as  a  messenger  of  the 
Sun,  richly  dressed,  with  his  mantle  girded  round  his 
body,  and  a  lance  in  his  hand.  The  lance  was  decked 
with  feathers  of  many  hues,  extending  from  the  blade 
tO'  the  socket,  and  fastened  with  rings  of  gold.  He 
ran  down  the  hill  from  the  fortress  brandishinof  his 
lance,  till  he  reached  the  centre  of  the  great  square, 
where  stood  the  golden  urn,  like  a  fountain,  that  was 
used  for  the  sacrifice  of  chicha.  Here  four  other  Incas 
of  the  blood  royal  awaited  him,  each  with  a  lance  in 
his  hand,  and  his  mantle  girded  up  to  run.  The 
messenger  touched  their  four  lances  with  his  lance, 
and  told  them  that  the  Sun  bade  them,  as  his  mes- 
sengers, drive  the  evils  out  of  the  city.  The  four 
Incas  then  separated  and  ran  down  the  four  royal 
roads  which  led  out  of  the  city  to  the  four  quarters  of 


iTi  OF  EVILS  169 

the  world.     While  they  ran,  all  the  people,  great  and 
small,    came   to   the   doors   of  their   houses,  and   with 
great  shouts  of  joy  and  gladness  shook  their  clothes, 
as   if  they   were   shaking   off  dust,    while   they   cried, 
"  Let  the  evils  be  gone.      How  greatly  desired   has 
this  festival  been  by  us.      O  Creator  of  all  things,  per- 
mit us  to  reach  another  year,  that  we  may  see  another 
feast  like  this."     After  they  had  shaken  their  clothes, 
they  passed  their  hands  over  their  heads,  faces,  arms, 
and  legs,  as   if  in  the  act  of  washing.     All  this  was 
done  to  drive  the  evils  out  of  their  houses,  that  the 
messeno-ers  of  the   Sun  mig^ht  banish  them   from  the 
city.     This  was  done  not  only  in  the  streets  through 
which  the   Incas  ran,  but  generally  in  all  quarters  of 
the  city.     Moreover,  they  all  danced,  the  Inca  himself 
amongst  them,  and  bathed  in  the  rivers  and  fountains, 
saying  that  their  maladies  would  come  out  of  them. 
Then  they  took  great  torches  of  straw,  bound  round 
with  cords.      These  they  lighted,  and  passed  from  one 
to  the  other,  striking  each  other  with   them,  and  say- 
ing, "  Let  all  harm  go  away."     Meanwhile  the  runners 
ran  with  their  lances  for  a  quarter  of  a  league  outside 
the  city,  where  they  found  four  other  Incas  ready,  who 
received    the    lances    from    their  hands  and   ran  with 
them.      Thus    the    lances    were    carried    by   relays    of 
runners  for  a  distance  of  five  or  six  leagues,  at  the  end 
of  which   the   runners    washed    themselves   and  their 
weapons  in  rivers,  and  set  up  the  lances,  in  sign  of  a 
boundary  within  which  the  banished  evils  might  not 
return.^ 


1  Garcilasso  de  la  Vega,  Royal  Com-  Yncas  (Hakluyt  Society,  1873),  p.    20 

mentaries  of  the  Yncas,  pt.  i.  bk.  vii.  ch.  sqq.;  Acosta,  History  of  the  Indies,  bk. 

6,  vol.  ii.  p.  228  S(/c/.,  Markham's  trans-  v.  ch.  28,  vol.  ii.  p.  375    sc/.    (Hakluyt 

lation  ;  Molina,  "  Fables  and  Rites  of  Society,     1880).       The     accounts     of 

the  Yncas,"  in  Rites  and  Laws  of  the  Garcilasso  and  Molina    are    somewhat 


i7o  PERIODIC  EXPULSION  chap. 

The  negroes  of  Guinea  annually  banish  the  devil 
from  all  their  towns  with  much  ceremony.  At  Axim, 
on  the  Gold  Coast,  this  annual  expulsion  is  preceded 
by  a  feast  of  eight  days,  during  which  mirth  and  jollity 
reign,  and  "a  perfect  lampooning  liberty  is  allowed, 
and  scandal  so  highly  exalted,  that  they  may  freely 
sing  of  all  the  faults,  villanies,  and  frauds  of  their 
superiors  as  well  as  inferiors,  without  punishment,  or 
so  much  as  the  least  interruption."  On  the  eighth 
day  they  hunt  out  the  devil  with  a  dismal  cry,  running 
after  him  and  pelting  him  with  sticks,  stones,  and 
whatever  comes  to  hand.  When  they  have  driven 
him  far  enough  out  of  the  town,  they  all  return.  In 
this  way  he  is  driven  out  of  more  than  a  hundred 
towns  at  the  same  time.  To  make  sure  that  he  does 
not  return  to  their  houses,  the  women  wash  and  scour 
all  their  wooden  and  earthen  vessels,  "to  free  them 
from  all  uncleanness  and  the  devil."  ^  At  Onitsha, 
on  the  Ouorra  River,  Mr.  J.  C.  Taylor  witnessed  the 
celebration  of  New  Year's  Day  by  the  negroes.  It 
fell  on  20th  December  1858.  Every  family  brought  a 
firebrand  out  into  the  street,  threw  it  away,  and 
exclaimed  as  they  returned,  "  The  gods  of  the  new- 
year !  New  Year  has  come  round  again."  Mr. 
Taylor  adds,  "  The  meaning  of  the  custom  seems  to 
be  that  the  fire  is  to  drive  away  the  old  year  with  its 
sorrows  and  evils,  and  to  embrace  the  new  year  with 

discrepant,  but  this  may  be  explained  account  is  very  brief.      In  the  descrip- 

by  the  statement  of  the  latter  that  "  in  tion  given  in  the  text  features  have  been 

one  year   they  added,   and  in    another  borrowed  from  all  three  accounts,  where 

they  reduced  the  number  of  ceremonies,  these     seemed     consistent     with     each 

according   to   circumstances."      Molina  other, 
places  the  festival  in  August,  Garcilasso 

and  Acosta  in  .September.      According  '   Bosnian's  "Guinea,"  in  Pinkerton's 

to     Garcilasso     there    were     only    four  Voyages  and   Travels,   xvi.    402.      Cp. 

runners  in  Cuzco  ;  according  to  Molina  Pierre   Bouche,   La    Cote  des  Esclaves, 

there    were    four    hundred.      Acosta's  p.  395. 


Ill  OF  EVILS  171 

hearty  reception."  ^  Of  all  Abyssinian  festivals  that  of 
Mascal  or  the  Cross  is  celebrated  with  the  greatest 
pomp.  The  eve  of  the  festival  witnesses  a  ceremony 
which  doubtless  belongs  to  the  world-wide  class  of 
customs  we  are  dealing  with.  At  sunset  a  discharge 
of  firearms  takes  place  from  all  the  principal  houses. 
"  Then  every  one  provides  himself  with  a  torch,  and 
during  the  early  part  of  the  night  bonfires  are  kindled, 
and  the  people  parade  the  town,  carrying  their  lighted 
torches  in  their  hands.  They  go  through  their  houses 
too,  poking  a  light  into  every  dark  corner  in  the  hall, 
under  the  couches,  in  the  stables,  kitchen,  etc.,  as  if 
looking  for  something  lost,  and  calling  out,  '  Akho, 
akhoky  !  turn  out  the  spinage,  and  bring  in  the  por- 
ridge ;  Mascal  is  come ! '  .  .  .  After  this  they  play, 
and  poke  fun  and  torches  at  each  other."  - 

Sometimes  the  date  of  the  annual  expulsion  of 
devils  is  fixed  with  reference  to  the  agricultural 
seasons.  Among  the  Hos  of  North- Eastern  India 
the  great  festival  of  the  year  is  the  harvest  home, 
held  in  January,  when  the  granaries  are  full  of 
grain,  and  the  people,  to  use  their  own  expression, 
are  full  of  devilry.  "They  have  a  strange  notion 
that  at  this  period  men  and  women  are  so  over- 
charged with  vicious  propensities,  that  it  is  absolutely 
necessary  for  the  safety  of  the  person  to  let  off  steam 
by  allowing  for  a  time  full  vent  to  the  passions."  The 
ceremonies  open  with  a  sacrifice  to  the  village  god  of 
three  fowls,  two  of  which  must  be  black.  Along  with 
them  are  offered  flowers  of  the  Palas  tree,  bread  made 
from  rice-flour,  and  sesamum  seeds.  These  offerings 
are   presented  by   the  village  priest,  who  prays  that 

^   S.  Crowther  and  J.  C.  Taylor.     The  -  Mansfield       Parkyns,       Life       in 

Gospel  on  the  Banks  of  the  Nigei-,  p  320.       Abyssinia,  p.  285  sqq. 


172  PERIODIC  EXPULSION  chap. 

during  the  year  about  to  begin  they  and  their  children 
may  be  preserved  from  all  misfortune  and  sickness, 
and  that  they  may  have  seasonable  rain  and  good 
crops.  Prayer  is  also  made  in  some  places  for  the 
souls  of  the  dead.  At  this  time  an  evil  spirit  is  sup- 
posed to  infest  the  place,  and  to  get  rid  of  it  men, 
women,  and  children  go  in  procession  round  and 
through  every  part  of  the  village  with  sticks  in  their 
hands,  as  if  beating  for  game,  singing  a  wild  chant, 
and  shouting  vociferously,  till  they  feel  assured  that 
the  evil  spirit  must  have  fled.  Then  they  give  them- 
selves up  to  feasting  and  drinking  rice-beer,  till  they 
are  in  a  fit  state  for  the  wild  debauch  which  follows. 
The  festival  now  "  becomes  a  saturnale,  during  which 
servants  forget  their  duty  to  their  masters,  children 
their  reverence  for  parents,  men  their  respect  for 
women,  and  women  all  notions  of  modesty,  delicacy, 
and  gentleness  ;  they  become  raging  bacchantes." 
Usually  the  Hos  are  quiet  and  reserved  in  manner, 
decorous  and  gentle  to  women.  But  during  this 
festival  "  their  nature  appears  to  undergo  a  temporary 
change.  Sons  and  daughters  revile  their  parents  in 
gross  language,  and  parents  their  children ;  men  and 
women  become  almost  like  animals  in  the  indulgence 
of  their  amorous  propensities."  The  Mundaris,  kins- 
men and  neighbours  of  the  Hos,  keep  the  festival  in 
much  the  same  manner.  "  The  resemblance  to  a 
Saturnale  is  very  complete,  as  at  this  festival  the  farm 
labourers  are  feasted  by  their  masters,  and  allowed  the 
utmost  freedom  of  speech  in  addressing  them.  It  is 
the  festival  of  the  harvest  home  ;  the  termination  of 
one  year's  toil,  and  a  slight  respite  from  it  before  they 
commence  ao-ain."^ 

o 

'   Dalton,  Ethnology  of  Bengal,  p.   196  sq. 


Ill  OF  EVILS  173 

Amono-st    some    of    the     Hindoo     Koosh    tribes, 
as    among    the     Hos    and     Mundaris,    the    expulsion 
of  devils  takes  place  after  harvest.      When   the  last 
crop  of  autumn  has  been  got  in,  it  is  thought  necessary 
to    drive    away   evil    spirits    from    the    granaries.      A 
kind  of  porridge  called   viool  is  eaten,   and  the  head 
of  the  family  takes  his  matchlock  and  fires  it  into  the 
floor.     Then,  going  outside,  he  sets  to  work  loading 
and  firing  till  his  powder  horn  is  exhausted,  while  all 
his  neighbours  are  similarly  employed.      The  next  day 
is  spent  in  rejoicings.      In  Chitral  this  festival  is  called 
"devil-driving."^      On  the  other  hand  the  Khonds  of 
India    expel    the    devils    at    seed-time    instead    of   at 
harvest.     At  this  time  they  worship  Pitteri  Pennu,  the 
god  of  increase  and  of  gain  in  every  shape.     On  the 
first  day  of  the  festival  a  rude  car  is  made  of  a  basket 
set  upon  a  few  sticks,   tied  upon   bamboo   rollers   for 
wheels.      The  priest  takes  this  car  first  to  the  house  of 
the  lineal  head  of  the  tribe,  to  whom  precedence  is  given 
in  all  ceremonies  connected  with  agriculture.      Here  he 
receives  a  little  of  each  kind  of  seed  and  some  feathers. 
He  then  takes  the  car  to  all  the  other  houses  in  the 
village,    each   of  which   contributes   the   same   things. 
Lastly,    the   car   is   conducted   to   a   field   without   the 
village,  attended  by  all  the  young  men,  who  beat  each 
other   and   strike   the   air   violently   with    long   sticks. 
The  seed  thus  carried  out  is  called  the  share  of  the 
"evil  spirits,  spoilers  of  the  seed."     "These  are  con- 
sidered to  be  driven  out  with  the  car ;    and  when  it 
and  its  contents  are  abandoned  to  them,  they  are  held 
to  have  no  excuse  for  interfering  with  the  rest  of  the 
seed-corn."      Next  day  each  household  kills  a  hog  over 
the  seed   for   the   year,    and   prays   to    Pitteri    Pennu. 

^   Biddulph,  Tribes  of  the  Hindoo  Koosh,  p.  103. 


174  rE  RIO  Die  EXPULSION 


The  elders  then  feast  upon  the  hogs.  The  young 
men  are  excluded  from  the  repast,  but  enjoy  the  privi- 
lege of  waylaying  and  pelting  with  jungle  fruit  their 
elders  as  they  return  from  the  feast.  Upon  the  third 
day  the  lineal  head  of  the  tribe  goes  out  and  sows  his 
seed,  after  which  all  the  rest  may  do  so.^ 

The  people  of  Bali,  an  island  to  the  east  of  Java, 
have  periodical  expulsions  of  devils  upon  a  great  scale. 
Generally  the  time  chosen  for  the  expulsion  is  the  day 
of  the  "dark  moon"  in  the  ninth  month.  When  the 
demons  have  been  long  unmolested  the  country  is  said 
to  be  "  warm,"  and  the  priest  issues  orders  to  expel 
them  by  force,  lest  the  whole  of  Bali  should  be 
rendered  uninhabitable.  On  the  day  appointed  the 
people  of  the  village  or  district  assemble  at  the 
principal  temple.  Here  at  a  cross-road  offerings  are 
set  out  for  the  devils.  After  prayers  have  been  recited 
by  the  priests,  the  blast  of  a  horn  summons  the  devils 
to  partake  of  the  meal  which  has  been  prepared  for 
them.  At  the  same  time  a  number  of  men  step 
forward  and  light  their  torches  at  the  holy  lamp  which 
burns  before  the  chief  priest.  Immediately  afterwards, 
followed  by  the  bystanders,  they  spread  in  all  direc- 
tions and  march  through  the  streets  and  lanes  crying, 
"Depart!  go  away!"  Wherever  they  pass,  the 
people  who  have  stayed  at  home  hasten  by  a  deafening 
knocking  on  doors,  beams,  rice-blocks,  etc.,  to  take 
their  share  in  the  expulsion  of  devils.  Thus  chased 
from  the  houses,  the  fiends  flee  to  the  banquet  which 

1   W.      Macpherson,     Memorials     of  them  to  go  than  as  a  vehicle  in  which 

Service  in  India,  p.  357  sq.      Possibly  they  are   actually   carted   away.      Any- 

this  case   belongs   more  strictly  to  the  how  it  is  convenient   to  take  this  case 

class  of  mediate  expulsions,  the  devils  along  with   those    other  expulsions    of 

being  driven   out  upon  the  car.      Per-  demons  which  are  the  accompaniment 

haps,  however,  the  car  with  its  contents  of  an  agricultural  festival, 
is  regarded  rather  as  a  bribe  to  induce 


m  OF  EVILS  175 

has  been  set  out  for  them  ;  but  here  the  priest  re- 
ceives them  with  curses  which  finally  drive  them 
from  the  district.  When  the  last  devil  has  taken  his 
departure,  the  uproar  is  succeeded  by  a  dead  silence, 
which  lasts  during  the  next  day  also.  The  devils,  it  is 
thought,  are  anxious  to  return  to  their  old  homes,  and 
in  order  to  make  them  think  that  Bali  is  not  Bali  but 
some  desert  island,  no  one  may  stir  from  his  own 
premises  for  twenty -four  hours.  Even  ordinary 
household  work,  including  cooking,  is  discontinued. 
Only  the  watchmen  may  show  themselves  in  the 
streets.  Wreaths  of  thorns  and  leaves  are  hung  at  all 
the  entrances  to  warn  strangers  from  entering.  Not 
till  the  third  day  is  this  state  of  siege  raised,  and  even 
then  it  is  forbidden  to  work  at  the  rice-fields  or  to  buy 
and  sell  in  the  market.  Most  people  still  stay  at  home, 
striving  to  while  away  the  time  with  cards  and  dice.^ 

In  some  parts  of  Fiji  an  annual  ceremony  took  place 
which  has  much  the  aspect  of  an  expulsion  of  devils. 
The  time  of  its  celebration  was  determined  by  the 
appearance  of  a  certain  fish  or  sea-slug  (balolo)  which 
swarms  out  in  dense  shoals  from  the  coral  reefs  on  a 
single  day  of  the  year,  usually  in  the  last  quarter  of  the 
moon  in  November.  The  appearance  of  the  sea-slugs 
was  the  signal  for  a  general  feast  at  those  places  where 
they  were  taken.  An  influential  man  ascended  a  tree 
and  prayed  to  the  spirit  of  the  sky  for  good  crops,  fair 
winds,  and  so  on.  Thereupon  a  tremendous  clatter, 
with  drumming  and  shouting,  was  raised  by  all  the 
people  in  their  houses  for  about  half  an  hour.  This 
was  followed  by  a   dead  quiet  for  four   days,   during 


1  R.  van  Eck,  "  Schetsen  van  het  60.  Van  Eck's  account  is  reprinted 
eiland  Bali,"  Tijdschrift  voor  Neder-  in  J.  Jacobs's  Eeiiigen  tijd  onder  de 
landsch  Indie,  N.    S.  viii.   (1879)   58-      ^a/2>rj- (Batavia,  1883),  p.  \()0  sqq. 


176  PERIODIC  EXPULSION  chap. 

which  the  people  feasted  on  the  sea-slug.  All  this 
time  no  work  of  any  kind  might  be  done,  not  even  a 
leaf  plucked  nor  the  offal  removed  from  the  houses.  If 
a  noise  was  made  in  any  house,  as  by  a  child  crying,  a 
forfeit  was  at  once  exacted  by  the  chief  At  daylight 
on  the  expiry  of  the  fourth  night  the  whole  town 
was  in  an  uproar  ;  men  and  boys  scampered  about, 
knocking  with  clubs  and  sticks  at  the  doors  of  the 
houses  and  crying  "  Sinariba."  This  concluded  the 
ceremony.^ 

On  the  night  before  spring  begins  the  Japanese 
throw  roasted  beans  against  the  walls  and  floors  of 
their  houses,  crying  thrice  loudly,  "  Away  from  here, 
wicked  spirit!"  but  adding  softly,  "Enter,  O  god  of 
riches  !  "  -  Amongst  some  of  the  Hindus  of  the  Pun- 
jaub  on  the  morning  after  Diwali  or  the  festival  of 
lamps  (at  which  the  souls  of  ancestors  are  believed  to 
visit' the  house)  the  oldest  woman  of  the  family  takes 
all  the  sweepings  and  rubbish  of  the  family  and  throws 
them  out,  with  the  words,  "  Let  all  dirt  and  wretched- 
ness depart  from  here,  and  all  good  fortune  come  in.''^* 
In  Tonquin  a  tJieckydaiv  or  general  expulsion  of 
malevolent  spirits  commonly  took  place  once  a  year, 
especially  if  there  was  a  great  mortality  amongst  men 
or  cattle,  "the  cause  of  which  they  attribute  to  the 
malicious  spirits  of  such  men  as  have  been  put  to  death 
for  treason,  rebellion,  and  conspiring  the  death  of  the 
king,  general,  or  princes,  arid  in  that  revenge  of  the 
punishment  they  have  suffered,  they  are  bent  to  destroy 

1    U.S.  Exploring  Expedition,  Ethno-  while   the  women   and    boys    remained 

graphyi  ajtd  Philology,  by  H.   Hale,  p.  shut  up  in  their  houses. 

67   sq.;  Ch.    Wilkes,   Narrative  of  the  2  Bastian,   Die    Volker  des   ostlichen 

U.S.  Exploring  Expedition,  iii.  90  sq.  Asien,  v.  367. 

According  to  the  latter,  the  sea  -  slug  3  Punjab  Notes  and  Queries,  ii.  No. 

was  eaten  by  the  men  alone,  who  lived  792  ;  D.    C.  J.    Ibbetson,    Outlines  of 

during   tlic    four    days   in   the    temple,  Pa72jab  Ethnography,  -p-   "9- 


OF  EVILS  177 


everything  and  commit  horrible  violence.     To  prevent 
which    their  superstition  has  suggested  to  them   the 
institution  of  this  theckydaw  as  a  proper  means  to  drive 
the  devil  away,  and  purge  the  country  of  evil  spirits." 
The  day  appointed  for  the  ceremony  was  generally  the 
25th  of  February,  one  month  after  the  commencement 
of  the  new  year,  which  began  on  the  25th  of  January. 
The  intermediate    month   was   a   season   of  feasting, 
merry-making  of  all  kinds,  and  general  licence.     Dur- 
ing the  whole  month  the  great  seal  was  kept  shut  up  in 
a  box,  face  downwards,  and  the  law  was,  as  it  were, 
laid  asleep.    All  courts  of  justice  were  closed  ;  debtors 
could    not    be    seized  ;    small    crimes,    such    as    petty 
larceny,  fighting,  and  assault,  escaped  with   impunity  ; 
only  treason  and  murder  were  taken  account  of  and 
the   malefactors    detained    till    the    great    seal   should 
come    into   operation    again.       At    the    close    of    the 
saturnalia  the  wicked  spirits  were  driven  away.     Great 
masses  of  troops  and  artillery  having  been  drawn  up 
with   flying  colours   and   all   the  pomp    of  war,    "the 
general  beginneth  then  to  offer  meat  offerings  to  the 
criminal  devils  and  malevolent  spirits  (for  it  is  usual 
and    customary   likewise    amongst   them    to   feast  the 
condemned   before  their  execution),   inviting  them   to 
eat  and  drink,  when  presently  he  accuses  them  in  a 
strange  language,   by   characters  and  figures,   etc.,   of 
many  offences  and  crimes  committed  by  them,   as   to 
their  having  disquieted  the  land,  killed  his  elephants 
and  horses,  etc.,  for  all  which  they  justly  deserved  to 
be  chastised  and  banished  the  country.     Whereupon 
three  great  guns   are   fired  as   the  last  signal ;    upon 
which  all  the  artillery  and  musquets   are   discharged, 
that,   by  their  most   terrible  noise   the  devils  may  be 
driven   away ;    and    they   are   so    blind    as   to    believe 

VOL.    II  N 


178  PERIODIC  EXPULSION  chap. 

for  certain,  that  they  really  and  effectually  put  them 
to  flight." ' 

In  Cambodia  the  expulsion  of  evil  spirits  took  place 
in  March.  Bits  of  broken  statues  and  stones,  considered 
as  the  abode  of  the  demons,  were  collected  and  brought 
to  the  capital.  Here  as  many  elephants  were  collected 
as  could  be  got  together.  On  the  evening  of  the  full 
moon  volleys  of  musketry  were  fired  and  the  elephants 
charged  furiously  to  put  the  devils  to  flight.^  In  Siam 
the  banishment  of  demons  is  annually  carried  into 
effect  on  the  last  day  of  the  old  year.  A  signal  gun 
is  fired  from  the  palace  ;  it  is  answered  from  the 
next  station,  and  so  on  from  station  to  station,  till  the 
firing  has  reached  the  outer  gate  of  the  city.  Thus 
the  demons  are  driven  out  step  by  step.  As  soon  as 
this  is  done  a  consecrated  rope  is  fastened  round  the 
circuit  of  the  city  walls  to  prevent  the  banished  demons 
from  returning.  The  rope  is  made  of  tough  couch-grass 
and  is  painted  in  alternate  stripes  of  red,  yellow,  and 
blue.^  The  Shans  of  Southern  China  annually  expel  the 
fire-spirit.  The  ceremony  was  witnessed  by  the  English 
Mission  under  Colonel  Sladen  on  the  13th  of  August 
1868.  Bullocks  and  cows  were  slaughtered  in  the 
market-place ;  the  meat  was  all  sold,  part  of  it  was 
cooked  and  eaten,  while  the  rest  was  fired  out  of  guns 

1  Baron,  "  Description  of  the  King-  Asien,  iii. -237,  298,  314,  529  sq.; 
dom  of  Tonqueen,"  Yvc^&xVo^i,  Voyages  Pallegoix,  Royatime  Thai  on  Stain,  i. 
a7td  Travels,  ix.  673,  695  sq.;  cp.  252.  Bastian  (p.  314),  with  whom 
Richard,  "  History  of  Tonquin,"  ?7'.  p.  Pallegoix  seems  to  agree,  distinctly 
746.  The  account  of  the  ceremony  by  states  that  the  expulsion  takes  place  on 
Tavernier  (whom  Baron  criticises  very  the  last  day  of  the  year.  Yet  both 
unfavourably)  is  somewhat  different.  state  that  it  occurs  in  the  fourth  month 
According  to  him  the  expulsion  of  of  the  year.  According  to  Pallegoix 
wicked  souls  at  the  New  Year  is  com-  (i.  253)  the  Siamese  year  is  composed 
binedwith  sacrifice  to  the  honoured  dead.  of  twelve  lunar  months,  and  the  first 
^e&Yia.xx\?,,  Voyages  ajid  Ti-avels,\.  2>2T,.  month    usually    begins    in    December. 

2  Aymonier,  Notice  stcr  le  Cambodge,  Hence  the  expulsion  of  devils  would 
p.  62.  commonly  take  place  in  March,  as  in 

3  Bastian,   Die    V'dlkcr  des  ostlichcn  Cambodia. 


OF  DEVILS  179 


at  sundown.  The  pieces  of  flesh  which  fell  on  the 
land  were  supposed  to  become  mosquitoes,  those  which 
fell  in  the  water  were  believed  to  turn  into  leeches. 
In  the  evening  the  chief's  retainers  beat  gongs  and 
blew  trumpets  ;  and  when  darkness  had  set  in  torches 
were  lit  and  a  party,  preceded  by  the  musicians,  searched 
the  central  court  for  the  fire-spirit,  who  is  supposed  to 
lurk  about  at  this  season  with  evil  intent.  They  then 
searched  all  the  rooms  and  the  gardens,  throwing  the 
light  of  the  torches  into  every  nook  and  corner  where 
the  evil  spirit  might  find  a  hiding-place.^ 

Annual  expulsions  of  demons  or  of  evil  in- 
fluences are  not  unknown  in  Europe  at  the  present 
day.  Amongst  the  heathen  Wotyaks,  a  Finnish 
people  of  Eastern  Russia,  all  the  young  girls  of  the 
village  assemble  on  the  last  day  of  the  year  or  on  New 
Year's  Day  armed  with  sticks,  the  ends  of  which  are 
split  in  nine  places.  With  these  they  beat  every 
corner  of  the  house  and  yard,  saying,  "We  are  driving 
Satan  out  of  the  village."  Afterwards  the  sticks  are 
thrown  into  the  river  below  the  village,  and  as  they 
float  down  stream  Satan  goes  with  them  to  the  next 
village,  from  which  he  must  be  driven  out  in  turn.  In 
some  villages  the  expulsion  is  managed  otherwise. 
The  unmarried  men  receive  from  every  house  in  the 
village  groats,  flesh,  and  brandy.  These  they  take  to 
the  field,  light  a  fire  under  a  fir-tree,  boil  the  groats, 
and  eat  of  the  food  they  have  brought  with  them,  after 
pronouncing  the  words,  "  Go  away  into  the  wilderness, 
come  not  into  the  house."  Then  they  return  to  the 
village  and  enter  every  house  where  there  are  young 
women.  They  take  hold  of  the  young  women  and 
throw  them  into  the  snow,  saying,  "  May  the  spirits  of 

1  J.  Anderson,  Mandalay  to  Moiiiien,  p.  308. 


i8o  PERIODIC  EXPULSION  chap. 

disease  leave  you."  The  remains  of  the  groats  and 
the  other  food  are  then  distributed  among  all  the 
houses  in  proportion  to  the  amount  that  each  con- 
tributed, and  each  family  consumes  its  share.  Accord- 
ing to  a  Wotyak  of  the  Malmyz  district  the  young 
men  throw  into  the  snow  whomever  they  find  in  the 
houses,  and  this  is  called  "  driving  out  Satan  ; "  more- 
over some  of  the  boiled  groats  are  thrown  into  the 
fire  with  the  words,  "O  god,  afflict  us  not  with  sick- 
ness and  pestilence,  give  us  not  up  as  a  prey  to  the 
spirits  of  the  wood."  But  the  most  antique  form  of 
the  ceremony  is  that  observed  by  the  Wotyaks  of  the 
Kasan  Government.  First  of  all  a  sacrifice  is  offered 
to  the  Devil  at  noon.  Then  all  the  men  assemble  on 
horseback  in  the  centre  of  the  village,  and  decide  with 
which  house  they  shall  begin.  When  this  question, 
which  often  gives  rise  to  hot  disputes,  is  settled,  they 
tether  their  horses  to  the  paling,  and  arm  themselves 
with  whips,  clubs  of  lime-wood,  and  bundles  of  lighted 
twigs.  The  lighted  twigs  are  believed  to  have  the 
greatest  terrors  for  Satan.  Thus  armed,  they  proceed 
with  frightful  cries  to  beat  every  corner  of  the  house 
and  yard,  then  shut  the  door,  and  spit  at  the  ejected 
fiend.  So  they  go  from  house  to  house,  till  the  Devil 
has  been  driven  from  every  one.  Then  they  mount 
their  horses  and  ride  out  of  the  village,  yelling  wildly 
and  brandishing  their  clubs  in  every  direction.  Out- 
side of  the  village  they  fiing  away  the  clubs  and  spit 
once  more  at  the  Devil. ^  The  Cheremiss,  another 
Finnish  people  of  Eastern  Russia,  chase  Satan  from 
their  dwellings  by  beating  the  walls  with  cudgels  of 
lime-wood.     When  he  has  fled  to  the  wood,  they  pelt 

1  Max  Buch,  Die  Wotjdken,  p.  153  sq. 


OF   WITCHES 


the  trees  with  some  of  the  cheese-cakes  and  eggs  which 
furnished  the  feast. ^ 

In  Albania  on  Easter  Eve  the  young  people  light 
torches    of  resinous  wood    and  march   in   procession, 
swinging  them,  through    the    village.      At    last    they 
throw  the  torches  into  the  river,  crying,  "  Ha,  Kore ! 
we  throw  you  into  the  river,  like  these  torches,  that 
you  may  never  return.""     In  some  villages  of  Calabria 
the  month  of  March  is  inaugurated  with  the  expulsion 
of  the  witches.      It  takes  place  at  night  to  the  sound 
of  the  church  bells,  the  people  running  about  the  streets 
and  crying,    "  March   is  come."     They   say  that  the 
witches  roam  about  in  March,   and   the  ceremony  is 
repeated  every  Friday  evening  during  the  month. ^     In 
the  Tyrol  the  expulsion  of  witches  takes  place  on  the 
first  of  May.      On  a  Thursday  at  midnight  bundles  are 
made  up  of  resinous  splinters,  black  and  red  spotted 
hemlock,    caper-spurge,   rosemary,   and  twigs    of  the 
sloe.     These  are  kept  and  burned  on   May  Day  by 
men  who  must  first  have  received  plenary  absolution 
from  the  church.     On  the  last  three  days  of  April  all 
the  houses  are  cleansed  and   fumigated  with  juniper 
berries  and  rue.     On  May  Day,  when  the  evening  bell 
has  rung  and  the  twilight  is  falling,  the  ceremony  of 
''  burning    out   the    witches,"   as   it    is    called,   begins. 
Men  and  boys  make  a  racket  with  whips,  bells,  pots, 
and  pans ;    the  women    carry  censers ;    the  dogs   are 
unchained  and   run   barking  and  yelping  about.     As 
soon  as  the  church  bells  begin  to  ring,  the  bundles  of 
twigs,  fastened  on  poles,  are  set  on  fire  and  the  incense 

1  Bastian,   Der  Alensch  in   der  Ge-  3  Vincenzo     Dorsa,     La    U-adizione 
schichie,  ii.  94.  greco-latitia  negli  usi  e   nelle  credenze 

2  J.     G.     von    Hahn,     Albanesische  popolari  della  Calabria  Citeriore,  p.  42 
Stiidien,  i.  160.      Cp.  above,  vol.  i.  p.  sq. 

276. 


1 82  EXPULSION  OF 


is  ienited.  Then  all  the  house-bells  and  dinner-bells 
are  rung,  pots  and  pans  are  clashed,  dogs  bark,  every 
one  must  make  a  noise.  And  amid  this  hubbub  all 
scream  at  the  pitch  of  their  voices, 

"  Witch  flee,  flee  from  here, 
Or  it  will  go  ill  with  thee." 

Then  they  run  seven  times  round  the  houses,  the 
yards,  and  the  village.  So  the  witches  are  smoked 
out  of  their  lurking-places  and  driven  away.^  At 
Brunnen  in  Switzerland  the  boys  go  about  in 
procession  on  Twelfth  Night,  carrying  torches  and 
lanterns,  and  making  a  great  noise  with  horns,  cow- 
bells, whips,  etc.  This  is  said  to  frighten  away  the  two 
female  spirits  of  the  wood,  Strudeli  and  Stratteli.^ 


§  15. — Scapegoats 

Thus  far  the  examples  cited  have  belonged  to  the 
class  of  direct  or  immediate  expulsion  of  ills.  It 
remains  to  illustrate  the  second  class  of  expulsions,  in 
which  the  evil  influences  are  either  embodied  in  a 
visible  form  or  are  at  least  supposed  to  be  loaded 
upon  a  material  medium,  which  acts  as  a  vehicle  to 

1  Von  Alpenburg,  I\Iythen  tind  Sagoi  will  be  the  consequence.     The  house 

Tirols,    p.    260    sq.       A    Westphalian  will  swarm  with  rats,  mice,  and  other 

form   of  the   expulsion  of  evil   is   the  vermin,    the    cattle    will    be    sick,    the 

driving   out    the   Siintevogel,    Siuinett-  butterflies  will  multiply  at    the    milk- 

vogel,ox So)ii»iervogel,i.e.,\heh\x\.iex?i.y.  bowls,    etc.     Woeste,     Volksiiberliefer- 

On    St.    Peter's    Day,    22d    February,  tmgen  in  der  Grafschaft  Mark,  p.  24  ; 

children  go  from  house  to  house  knock-  J.    W.    Wolf,    Beitrdge  ztir  deutschen 

ing  on  them  with  hammers  and  singing  Mythologie,   i.    87  ;    A.    Kuhn,    West- 

doggerel  rhymes  in  which  they  bid  the  fdlische    Sagen,    Gebrduche    und   Mdr- 

Somtnei-vbgel  to  depart.      Presents  are  chen,   ii.   g^  366-374  ;  Montanus,  Die 

given  to  them  at  every  house.      Or  the  deutschen  Vo/ksfeste,  Volksbniuche,  etc., 

people    of    the    house    themselves    go  p.  21  sq.;  Jahn,  Die  deutschen   Opfer- 

through    all    the   rooms,   knocking    on  gebrduche  bei  Ackerbau  tmd  Viehzticht, 

all  the  doors,  to  drive  away  the  Sun-  pp.  94-96. 

nenvogel.     If  this  ceremony  is  omitted,  2  Usenet,    "  Italische  Mythen,"    in 

it  is  thought  that  various  misfortunes  Rheinisches  Mziseum,  N.  F.  xxx.  198. 


EMBODIED  DEVILS  183 


draw  them  off  from  the  people,  village,  or  town.     The 
Pomos  of  California  celebrate  an  exjDulsion  of  devils 
every  seven  years,  at  which  the  devils  are  represented 
by    disguised   men.      "Twenty  or    thirty    men    array 
themselves   in   harlequin   rig  and   barbaric  paint,  and 
put  vessels  of  pitch  on  their  heads  ;  then  they  secretly 
go  out  into  the  surrounding  mountains.     These  are  to 
personify  the  devils.     A  herald  goes  up  to  the  top  of 
the  assembly-house,  and  makes  a  speech  to  the  multi- 
tude.    At  a  signal  agreed   upon   in   the  evening  the 
masqueraders  come  in  from  the  mountains,  with  the 
vessels  of  pitch  flaming  on  their  heads,  and  with  all 
the  frightful  accessories  of  noise,  motion,  and  costume 
which  the  savage  mind  can  devise  in  representation  of 
demons.     The  terrified  women   and  children   flee  for 
life,  the  men  huddle  them  inside  a  circle,  and,  on  the 
principle  of  fighting  the  devil  with   fire,   they  swing 
blazing  firebrands  in  the  air,  yell,  whoop,  and   make 
frantic  dashes  at  the  marauding  and  bloodthirsty  devils, 
so  creating  a  terrific  spectacle,  and  striking  great  fear 
into  the  hearts  of  the  assembled  hundreds  of  women, 
who  are  screaming  and  fainting  and  clinging  to  their 
valorous  protectors.       Finally  the  devils    siTcceed   in 
getting  into  the  assembly-house,  and  the  bravest  of 
the  men   enter  and   hold  a  parley  with  them.     As  a 
conclusion  of  the  whole  farce,  the  men  summon  courage, 
the  devils  are  expelled  from  the  assembly-house,  and 
with  a  prodigious  row  and  racket  of  sham  fighting  are 
chased  away  into  the  mountains."^     In  spring,  as  soon 
as  the  willow  leaves  were  full  grown  on  the  banks  of 
the  river,  the   Mandan   Indians  celebrated  their  great 
annual  festival,  one   of  the  features  of  which  was  the 
expulsion    of  the    devil.      A    man,    painted    black   to 

1  S.  Powers,  Tribes  of  California,  p.  159. 


1 84  EXPULSION  OF  DEVILS  chap. 

represent  the  devil,  entered  the  village  from  the 
prairie,  chased  and  frightened  the  women,  and  acted 
the  part  of  a  buffalo  bull  in  the  buffalo  dance,  the 
object  of  which  was  to  ensure  a  plentiful  supply  of 
buffaloes  during  the  ensuing  year.  Finally  he  was 
chased  from  the  village,  the  women  pursuing  him  with 
hisses  and  gibes,  beating  him  with  sticks,  and  pelting 
him  with  dirt.^  On  the  last  night  of  the  year  the 
palace  of  the  Kings  of  Cambodia  is  purged  of  devils. 
Men  painted  as  fiends  are  chased  by  elephants  about 
the  palace  courts.  When  they  have  been  expelled,  a 
consecrated  thread  of  cotton  is  stretched  round  the 
palace  to  keep  them  out."  The  Kasyas,  a  hill  tribe  of 
Assam,  annually  expel  the  demons.  The  ceremony 
takes  place  on  a  fixed  month  in  the  year,  and  part  of 
it  consists  in  a  struggle  between  two  bands  of  men 
who  stand  on  opposite  sides  of  a  stream,  each  side 
tugging  at  the  end  of  a  rope  which  is  stretched  across 
the  water.  In  this  contest,  which  resembles  the  game 
of  "  French  and  English,"  the  men  on  one  side  prob- 
ably represent  the  demons.^    At  Carmona  in  Andalusia, 

1  Q.Q.z.'CiYn,  North  American  Indians,  representing  the  demons  are  inclined 
i.  1665'^^.;  id.,  0-kee-pa,  a  Religiotts  to  pull  too  vigorously,  but  a  stick 
Ceremony,  and  other  -Ctistoms  of  the  generally  quells  this  unseemly  ardour 
JMandans.  in   the   cause   of  evil."     Lewin,    Wild 

2  Moura,  Le  Royaume  du  Cambodge,  Ti-ibes  of  Soittli-Eastern  India,  p.  185. 
i.  172.      Cp.  above,  p.  178.  The  contest   is   like  that  between  the 

3  A.  Bastian,  in  Verhandl.  d.  Berlin.  angels  and  devils  depicted  in  the  frescoes 
Gesellsch.  f.  Anthropol.  1 881,  p.  151  ;  of  the  Campo  Santo  at  Pisa.  In 
cp.  id. ,  Volkerstiimme  am  Brahmaputra,  Burma  a  similar  contest  takes  place  at 
p.  6  sq.  Amongst  the  Chukmas  of  the  funeral  of  a  holy  man  ;  but  there 
South-east  India  the  body  of  a  priest  is  the  original  meaning  of  the  ceremony 
conveyed  to  the  place  of  cremation  on  appears  to  be  forgotten.  See  Sanger- 
a  car;  ropes  are  attached  to  the  car,  mano,  Description  of  tlie  Burmese  Em- 
the  people  divide  themselves  into  two  pire  (ed.  1885),  p.  98  ;  Forbes,  B}-itish 
equal  bodies  and  pull  at  the  ropes  in  Burma,  p.  216  sq.;  Shway  Yoe, 
opposite  directions.  "One  side  re-  The  Bnrman,  ii.  3345;/.,  342.  Some- 
presents  the  good  spirits ;  the  other,  times  ceremonies  of  this  sort  are 
the  powers  of  evil.  The  contest  is  so  instituted  for  a  different  purpose.  In 
arranged  that  the  former  are  victorious.  some  East  Indian  islands  when  the 
Sometimes,    however,   the  young  men  people   want  a   rainy    wind    from    the 


DISEASE-BOATS  185 


on  one  day  of  the  year,  boys  are  stripped  naked  and 
smeared  with  glue  in  which  feathers  are  stuck.  Thus 
disguised,  they  run  from  house  to  house,  the  people 
trying  to  avoid  them  and  to  bar  their  houses  against 
them.^  The  ceremony  is  probably  a  relic  of  an  annual 
expulsion  of  devils. 

Oftener,  however,  the  expelled  demons  are  not 
represented  at  all,  but  are  understood  to  be  present 
invisibly  in  the  material  and  visible  vehicle  which 
conveys  them  away.  Here,  again,  it  will  be  con- 
venient to  distinguish  between  occasional  and  periodical 
expulsions.     We  begin  with  the  former. 

The  vehicle  which  conveys  away  the  demons  may 
be  of  various  kinds.  A  common  one  is  a  little  ship  or 
boat.  Thus,  in  the  southern  district  of  the  island  of 
Ceram,  when  a  whole  village  suffers  from  sick- 
ness, a  small  ship  is  made  and  filled  with  rice, 
tobacco,  eggs,  etc.,  which  have  been  contributed  by 
all  the  people.  A  little  sail  is  hoisted  on  the  ship. 
When  all  is  ready,  a  man  calls  out  in  a  very  loud 
voice,  "  O  all  ye  sicknesses,  ye  small -poxes,  agues, 
measles,  etc.,  who  have  visited  us  so  long  and  wasted 
us  so  sorely,  but  who  now  cease  to  plague  us,  we  have 
made  ready  this  ship  for  you,  and  we  have  furnished 
you  with  provender  sufficient  for  the  voyage.  Ye 
shall  have  no  lack  of  food  nor  of  siri  nor  of  pinang 
nor  of  tobacco.  Depart,  and  sail  away  from  us 
directly  ;  never  come  near  us  again,  but  go  to  a  land 
which  is  far  from  here.      Let  all  the  tides  and  winds 


west,    the    population    of   the    village,  kroesharige   rassen  tiisschen   Selebes   en 

men,  women,  and  children,  divide  into  Papua,   p.    282.     The   Cingalese   per- 

two  parties  and  pull  against  each  other  form    a    ceremony  like    "French  and 

at  the  ends  of  a  long  bamboo.     But  the  English  "    in   honour    of    the    goddess 

party  at  the  eastern  end  must  pull  the  Patine.       Forbes,     Eleven     Years    in 

harder,  in  order  to  draw  the  desired  \\-ind  Ceylon  (London,  1840),  i.  358. 

out  of  the  west.      Riedel,  De  sluik-en  ^  Folk-lore  Journal,  vii.  174. 


i86  DISEASE-BOA  TS 


waft  you  speedily  thither,  and  so  convey  you  thither 
that  for  the  time  to  come  we  may  hve  sound  and  well, 
and  that  we  may  never  see  the  sun  rise  on  you  again." 
Then  ten  or  twelve  men  carry  the  vessel  to  the  shore, 
and  let  it  drift  away  with  the  land  -  breeze,  feeling 
convinced  that  they  are  free  from  sickness  for  ever, 
or  at  least  till  the  next  time.  If  sickness  attacks  them 
again,  they  are  sure  it  is  not  the  same  sickness,  but  a 
different  one,  which  in  due  time  they  dismiss  in  the 
same  manner.  When  the  demon-laden  bark  is  lost 
to  sight,  the  bearers  return  to  the  village,  whereupon 
a  man  cries  out,  "  The  sicknesses  are  now  gone, 
vanished,  expelled,  and  sailed  away."  At  this  all 
the  people  come  running  out  of  their  houses,  passing 
the  word  from  one  to  the  other  with  great  joy,  beating 
on  gongs  and  on  tinkling  instruments.^ 

Similar  ceremonies  are  commonly  resorted  to  in  other 
East  Indian  islands.  Thus  in  Timorlaut,  to  mislead  the 
demons  who  are  causing  sickness,  a  small  prao,  contain- 
ing the  image  of  a  man  and  provisioned  for  a  long 
voyage,  is  allowed  to  drift  away  with  wind  and  tide.  As 
it  is  being  launched,  the  people  cry,  "  O  sickness,  go 
from  here  ;  turn  back ;  what  do  you  here  in  this 
poor  land  ?  "  Three  days  after  this  ceremony  a  pig  is 
killed,  and  part  of  the  flesh  is  offered  to  Dudilaa, 
who  lives  in  the  sun.  One  of  the  oldest  men  says, 
"  Old  sir,  I  beseech  you,  make  well  the  grandchildren, 
children,  women,  and  men,  that  we  may  be  able  to 
eat  pork  and  rice  and  to  drink  palm -wine.  I  will 
keep  my  promise.  Eat  your  share,  and  make  all 
the  people  in  the  village  well."  If  the  prao  is 
stranded  at  any  inhabited  spot,  the  sickness  will  break 

^  Fran90ts  Valentyn,    Oiid-en  jn'eiiw  Ost-Indicn,  iii.  14.      Backer,  VArchipel 
Indien,  p.  377  sq.,  copies  from  Valentyn. 


DISEA  SE-BOA  TS  1 87 


out    there.       Hence    a   stranded   prao    excites    much 
alarm  amongst  the   coast  population,  and  they  imme- 
diately burn  It,  because  demons  fly  from  fire/     In  the 
island    of    Buro    the    prao    which    carries    away   the 
demons  of  disease  is   about  twenty  feet  long,  rigged 
out   with    sails,   oars,   anchor,   etc.,   and  well    stocked 
with  provisions.      For  a  day  and  a  night  the  people 
beat  gongs  and  drums,  and   rush  about  to    frighten 
the  demons.      Next  morning  ten  stalwart  young  men 
strike    the   people   with    branches,   which  have    been 
previously   dipped    in  an  earthen  pot  of  water.      As 
soon  as  they  have  done  so,  they  run   down    to    the 
beach,  put  the  branches  on    board   the  prao,  launch 
another   prao  in   great  haste,    and    tow    the    disease- 
burdened  prao    far   out    to    sea.     There  they  cast  it 
off,  and  one  of  them  calls  out,  "Grandfather   Small- 
pox,  go  away — go  willingly  away — go  visit  another 
land  ;  we  have  made  you  food  ready  for  the  voyage, 
we    have    now    nothing  more  to  give."     When   they 
have   landed,   all    the   people   bathe  together    in    the 
sea.''     In  this   ceremony   the  reason  for  striking  the 
people  with  the  branches    is   clearly  to   rid  them    of 
the  disease -demons,  which   are  then  supposed  to  be 
transferred   to  the  branches.      Hence  the  haste  with 
which   the  branches  are  deposited    In    the   prao    and 
towed   away  to   sea.      So   In    the    inland   districts    of 
Ceram,  when  small -pox  or  other  sickness  Is    raging, 
the   priest   strikes    all    the   houses    with    consecrated 
branches,   which   are  then   thrown   into  the  river,    to 
be    carried   down  to    the  sea ;  ^    exactly  as    amongst 
the  Wotyaks  of  Russia  the  sticks  which  have  been 
used  for  expelling  the  devils    from    the    village    are 

1  Riedel,    De   sluik-cn   kroesharige   rassen    tiisschen   Selebes   en   Papua,    p. 
304  sq.  2  /^_  p.  25  sq.  3  //'.  p.   141- 


i88  DISEASE-BOATS 


thrown  into  the  river,  that  the  current  may  sweep  the 
baleful  burden  away.  In  Amboina,  for  a  similar 
purpose,  the  whole  body  of  the  patient  is  rubbed  with 
a  live  white  cock,  which  is  then  placed  on  a  little 
prao  and  committed  to  the  waves  ;  ^  and  in  the  Babar 
archipelago  the  bark  which  is  to  carry  away  to  sea 
the  sickness  of  a  whole  village  contains  a  bowl  of 
ashes  taken  from  every  kitchen  in  the  village,  and 
another  bowl  into  which  all  the  sick  people  have 
spat.-  The  plan  of  putting  puppets  in  the  boat  to 
represent  sick  persons,  in  order  to  lure  the  demons 
after  them,  is  not  uncommon.^ 

The  practice  of  sending  away  diseases  in  boats  is 
known  outside  the  limits  of  the  East  Indian  Archi- 
pelago. Thus  when  the  people  of  Tikopia,  a  small  island 
in  the  Pacific,  to  the  north  of  the  New  Hebrides,  were 
attacked  by  an  epidemic  cough,  they  made  a  little 
canoe  and  adorned  it  with  flowers.  Four  sons  of 
the  principal  chiefs  carried  it  on  their  shoulders  all 
round  the  island,  accompanied  by  the  whole  popu- 
lation, some  of  whom  beat  the  bushes,  while  others 
uttered  loud  cries.  On  returning  to  the  spot  from 
which  they  had  set  out,  they  launched  the  canoe  on  the 
sea.*  In  the  Nicobar  Islands,  in  the  Bay  of  Bengal, 
when  there  is  much  sickness  in  a  village  or  no  fish 
are  caught,  the  blame  is  laid  upon  the  spirits.     They 

1  Riedel,  op.  cit.  p.  78.  dl.  iii.  150;  Campen,  "  De  godsdienst- 

2  lb.  p.  357.  begiippen     der     Halmaherasche     Al- 
^  lb.   pp.    266,    304  sq.,    327,    357.       foeren,"  Tijdschrift  voor  Indische  Taal- 

For   other   examples   of  sending   away  Land -en  Volkenkzinde,  xxvii.  (1882)  p. 

disease-laden  boats  in  these  islands,  //'.  441  ;  Journal  of  the  Straits  Bratich  of 

pp.    181,    210;    Van    Eck,    "  Schetsen  the  Royal  Asiatic  Society,  ^o.   12,  pp. 

van  het  eiland   Bali,"    Tijdschrift  voor  229-231  ;  Van  Hasselt,  Volksbesckrijv- 

AWerlandsch  Indie,   N.S.    viii.    (1879)  ing  van  ]\Iidden-Su7natra,^.  98. 
p.    104;    Bastian,    Indonesien,  i.    147;  ^  '].Y)\xvaoxv\.Yy\}xv\\\Q,Voyageautour 

Hupe,    "  Korte   verhandeling   over   de  dii.    monde   et   a    la    recherche    de    La 

godsdienst,  zeden,  enz.  der  Dajakkers,"  Terotcse,   siir   la   corvette   Astrolabe,   v. 

Tijdschrift  voor  Ncerland's  Indie,  1 846,  311. 


SCAPEGOATS  189 


must  be  propitiated  with  offerings.  All  relations  and 
friends  are  invited,  a  huge  pig  is  roasted,  and  the  best 
of  it  is  eaten,  but  some  parts  are  offered  to  the  shades. 
The  heap  of  offerings  remains  in  front  of  the  house 
till  it  is  carried  away  by  the  rising  tide.  Then  the 
priests,  their  faces  reddened  with  paint  and  swine's 
blood,  pretend  to  catch  the  demon  of  disease,  and, 
after  a  hand-to-hand  struggle,  force  him  into  a 
model  boat,  made  ot  leaves  and  decked  with  garlands, 
which  is  then  towed  so  far  to  sea  that  neither  wind 
nor  tide  is  likely  to  drive  it  back  to  the  shore.^ 

Often  the  vehicle  which  carries  away  the  collected 
demons  or  ills  of  a  whole  community  is  an  animal  or 
scapegoat.  In  the  Central  Provinces  of  India,  when 
cholera  breaks  out  in  a  village,  every  one  retires  after 
sunset  to  his  house.  The  priests  then  parade  the 
streets,  taking  from  the  roof  of  each  house  a  straw, 
which  is  burnt  with  an  offering  of  rice,  ghi,  and 
turmeric,  at  some  shrine  to  the  east  of  the  village. 
Chickens  daubed  with  vermilion  are  driven  away  in 
the  direction  of  the  smoke,  and  are  believed  to  carry 
the  disease  with  them.  If  they  fail,  goats  are  tried, 
and  last  of  all  pigs.^  When  cholera  is  very  bad 
among  the  Bhars,  Mallans,  and  Kurmis  of  India, 
they  take  a  goat  or  a  buffalo  —  in  either  case  the 
animal  must  be  a  female,  and  as  black  as  possible — 
then  they  tie  some  grain,  cloves,  and  red  lead  in  a  yellow 
cloth  on  its  back,  and  turn  it  out  of  the  village.  It 
is  conducted  beyond  the  boundary,  and  is  not  allowed 
to  return.^     The  people  of  the  city  and  cantonments  of 

1  Roepstorff,   "  Ein  Geisterboot  der  see   Bastian,    Die    Vdlker  des   ostUchen 

Nicobaresen,"    Verhandl.     der    Berlin.  Asien,  iii.  295  sq.,  485  sq. 
Gesellsch.f. Anthropologic {\%%\),^. /\.o\.  '^  Punjab  Notes  and  Queries,  i.  No. 

For  Siamese  applications  of  the  same  41 8. 
principle    to    the    cure    of  individuals,  ^  Id.  iii.  No.  373. 


igo  SCAPEGOATS 


Sagar  being  afflicted  with  a  violent  influenza,  "  I  had 
an  aiDpHcation  from  the  old  Queen  Dowager  of  Sagar 
to  allow  of  a  noisy  religious  procession,  for  the  purpose 
of  imploring  deliverance  from  this  great  calamity. 
Men,  women,  and  children  in  this  procession  were 
to  do  their  utmost  to  add  to  the  noise  by  '  raising 
their  voices  in  psalmody,'  beating  upon  their  brass 
pots  and  pans  with  all  their  might,  and  discharging 
firearms  where  they  could  get  them.  Before  the 
noisy  crowd  was  to  be  driven  a  buffalo,  which  had 
been  purchased  by  general  subscription,  in  order  that 
every  family  might  participate  in  the  merit.  They 
were  to  follow  it  out  eight  miles,  where  it  was  to  be 
turned  loose  for  any  man  who  would  take  it.  If  the 
animal  returned  the  disease  must  return  with  it,  and 
the  ceremony  be  performed  over  again.  ...  It  was, 
however,  subsequently  determined  that  the  animal 
should  be  a  goat ;  and  he  was  driven  before  the  crowd 
accordingly.  I  have  on  several  occasions  been  re- 
quested to  allow  of  such  noisy  ceremonies  in  cases 
of  epidemics."  ^  Once,  when  influenza  was  raging  in 
Pithuria,  a  man  had  a  small  carriage  made,  after  a 
plan  of  his  own,  for  a  pair  of  scapegoats,  which  were 
harnessed  to  it  and  driven  to  a  wood  at  some  distance, 
where  they  were  let  loose.  From  that  hour  the 
disease  entirely  ceased  in  the  town.  The  goats 
never  returned  ;  had  they  done  so,  "  the  disease 
must  have  come  back  with  them."  -  The  idea  of 
the  scapegoat  is  not  uncommon  in  the  hills  of  the 
Eastern  Ghats.  In  1886,  during  a  severe  outbreak 
of  small -pox,  the  people  of  Jeypur  made  "  puja  "  to 
a  goat,  marched  it  to  the  Ghats,  and  let  it  loose  on 

1  Pattjab  Notes  and  Queries,  ii.  No.  1127.  -  /(/.  ii.  No.  1123. 


SCAPEGOATS  191 


the  plains.^  In  Southern  Konkan,  on  the  appearance 
of  cholera,  the  villagers  went  in  procession  from  the 
temple  to  the  extreme  boundaries  of  the  village, 
carrying  a  basket  of  cooked  rice  covered  with  red 
powder,  a  wooden  doll  representing  the  pestilence, 
and  a  cock.  The  head  of  the  cock  was  cut  off  at 
the  village  boundary,  and  the  body  was  thrown  away. 
When  cholera  was  thus  transferred  from  one  village 
to  another,  the  second  village  observed  the  same 
ceremony  and  passed  on  the  scourge  to  its  neighbours, 
and  so  on  through  a  number  of  villages.^  When  the 
Aymara  Indians  were  suffering  from  a  plague,  they 
loaded  a  llama  with  the  clothes  of  the  plague-stricken 
people,  and  drove  the  animal  into  the  mountains, 
hoping  that  it  would  take  the  plague  away  with  it.^ 
Sometimes  the  scapegoat  is  a  man.  Some  of  the 
aboriginal  tribes  of  China,  as  a  protection  against 
pestilence,  select  a  man  of  great  muscular  strength  to 
act  the  part  of  scapegoat.  Having  besmeared  his  face 
with  paint,  he  performs  many  antics  with  the  view  of 
enticing  all  pestilential  and  noxious  influences  to  attach 
themselves  to  him  only.  He  is  assisted  by  a  priest. 
Finally  the  scapegoat,  hotly  pursued  by  men  and 
women  beating  gongs  and  tom-toms,  is  driven  with 
great  haste  out  of  the  town  or  village.^  A  Hindu 
cure  for  the  murrain  is  to  hire  a  man  of  the  Chamar 
caste,  turn  his  face  away  from  the  village,  brand  him 
with  a  red-hot  sickle,  and  let  him  go  out  into  the 
jungle,  taking  the  murrain  with  him.  He  must  not 
look  back.^ 


^  F.   Fawcett,   "On  the  Saoras  (or  ^  'R.  AnAx&e,  Ethttographische  Paral- 

Savaras),"    Journ.        Anthrop.        Soc.  lelen  jcnd  Verghiche  (first  series),  p.  30, 

Bombay,  i.  213  note.  *  J.  H.  Gray,  China,  ii.  306. 

2  Journ.   Anthrop.    Soc.   Bombay,   i.  ^  Panjab    Notes     and     Queries,     i. 

37-  598. 


192  PERIODIC  EXPULSION  chap. 

The  mediate  expulsion  of  evils  by  means  of  a 
scapegoat  or  other  material  vehicle,  like  the  immediate 
expulsion  of  them  in  invisible  form,  tends  to  become 
periodic,  and  for  a  like  reason.  Thus  every  year, 
generally  in  March,  the  people  of  Leti,  Moa,  and 
Lakor  send  away  all  their  diseases  to  sea.  They 
make  a  prao  about  six  feet  long,  rig  it  v^^ith  sails, 
oars,  rudder,  etc.,  and  every  family  deposits  in  it 
some  rice,  fruit,  a  fowl,  two  eggs,  insects  that  ravage 
the  fields,  etc.  Then  they  let  it  drift  away  to  sea, 
saying,  "  Take  away  from  here  all  kinds  of  sickness, 
take  them  to  other  islands,  to  other  lands,  distribute 
them  in  places  that  lie  eastward,  where  the  sun 
rises."  ^  The  Biajas  of  Borneo  annually  send  to  sea  a 
little  bark  laden  with  the  sins  and  misfortunes  of  the 
people.  The  crew  of  any  ship  that  falls  in  with 
the  ill-omened  bark  at  sea  will  suffer  all  the  sorrows 
with  which  it  is  laden."  At  the  beginning  of  the 
dry  season,  every  year,  the  Nicobar  islanders  carry 
the  model  of  a  ship  through  their  villages.  The 
devils  are  chased  out  of  the  huts,  and  driven  on  board 
the  little  ship,  which  is  then  launched  and  suffered  to 
sail  away  with  the  wind.^  At  Sucla-Tirtha,  in  India, 
an  earthen  pot  containing  the  accumulated  sins  of  the 
people  is  (annually  ?)  set  adrift  on  the  river.  Legend 
says  that  the  custom  originated  with  a  wicked  priest 
who,  after  atoning  for  his  guilt  by  a  course  of  austeri- 
ties and  expiatory  ceremonies,  was  directed  to  sail 
,  upon  the  river  in  a  boat  with  white  sails.  If  the  white 
sails  turned  black,  it  would  be  a  sign  that  his  sins  were 
forgiven  him.     They  did  so,   and  he  joyfully  allowed 


1  Riedel,    De    shiik-eii    kroesharige  2  Bastian,      Dcr     jMensch      in      der 

rassen    tusschen  Selebcs  en    Papua,   p.       Gcschichtc,  ii.  93. 
393.  3  Id.  ii.  91. 


Ill  OF  EMBODIED  EVILS  I93 

the  boat  to  drift  with  his  sins  to  sea.^  Amongst  many 
of  the  aboriginal  tribes  of  China,  a  great  festival  is 
celebrated  in  the  third  month  of  every  year.  It  is  held 
by  way  of  a  general  rejoicing  over  what  the  people 
believe  to  be  a  total  annihilation  of  the  ills  of  the  past 
twelve  months.  This  annihilation  is  supposed  to  be 
effected  in  the  following  way.  A  large  earthenware 
jar  filled  with  gunpowder,  stones,  and  bits  of  iron  is 
buried  in  the  earth.  A  train  of  gunpowder,  communi- 
cating with  the  jar,  is  then  laid  ;  and  a  match  being 
applied,  the  jar  and  its  contents  are  blown  up.  The 
stones  and  bits  of  iron  represent  the  ills  and  disasters 
of  the  past  year,  and  the  dispersion  of  them  by  the 
explosion  is  believed  to  remove  the  ills  and  disasters 
themselves.  The  festival  is  attended  with  much  revel-  - 
ling  and  drunkenness."  At  Old  Calabar,  in  Guinea, 
the  devils  are  expelled  once  every  two  years.  A 
number  of  figures  called  nabikejns  are  made  of  sticks 
and  bamboos,  and  fixed  indiscriminately  about  the 
town.  Some  of  them  represent  human  beings,  others 
birds,  crocodiles,  and  so  on.  After  three  or  four 
weeks  the  devils  are  expected  to  take  up  their  abode 
in  these  figures.  When  the  night  comes  for  their 
general  expulsion,  the  people  feast  and  sally  out  in 
parties,  beating  at  empty  corners,  and  shouting  with 
all  their  might.  Shots  are  fired,  the  nabikems  are  torn 
up  with  violence,  set  in  flames,  and  flung  into  the  river. 
The  orgies  last  till  daybreak,  and  the  town  is  consi- 
dered to  be  rid  of  evil  influences  for  two  years  to  come.^ 
Mr.  George  Bogle,  the  English  envoy  sent  to  Tibet 
by  Warren  Hastings,  witnessed  the  celebration  of  the 
Tibetan  New  Year's  Day  at  Teshu  Lumbo  the  capital 

1  Asiatic  Researches,  ix.  96  sq.  3  x.  J.    Hutchinson,   Ivipressions  of 

2  J.  H.  Gray,  China,  ii.  306  sq.  Western  Africa,  p.  162. 

VOL.   II  O 


194  SCAPEGOATS 


of  the  Teshu  Lama.  "  The  figure  of  a  man,  chalked 
upon  paper,  was  laid  upon  the  ground.  Many  strange 
ceremonies,  which  to  me  who  did  not  understand  them 
appeared  whimsical,  were  performed  about  it ;  and  a 
great  fire  being  kindled  in  a  corner  of  the  court,  it  was 
at  length  held  over  it,  and  being  formed  of  combustibles, 
vanished  with  much  smoke  and  explosion.  I  was  told 
it  was  a  figure  of  the  devil."  ^ 

On  one  day  of  the  year  some  of  the  people  of  the 
Western  Himalayas  take  a  dog,  intoxicate  him  with 
spirits  and  bhang  or  hemp,  and  having  fed  him  with 
sweetmeats,  lead  him  round  the  village  and  let  him 
loose.  They  then  chase  and  kill  him  with  sticks  and 
stones,  and  believe  that,  when  they  have  done  so,  no 
disease  or  misfortune  will  visit  the  village  durine  the 
year.^  In  some  parts  of  Breadalbane  it  was  formerly 
the  custom  on  New  Year's  Day  to  take  a  dog  to  the 
door,  give  him  a  bit  of  bread,  and  drive  him  out,  say- 
ing, "Get  away  you  dog!  Whatever  death  of  men, 
or  loss  of  cattle  would  happen  in  this  house  to  the  end 
of  the  present  year,  may  it  all  light  on  your  head  !  "  ^ 
It  appears  that  the  white  dogs  annually  sacrificed  by 
the  Iroquois  at  their  New  Year  Festival  are,  or  have 
been,  regarded  as  scapegoats.  According  to  Mr.  J. 
V.  H.  Clark,  who  witnessed  the  ceremony  in  January 
1841,  on  the  first  day  of  the  festival  all  the  fires  in  the 
village  were  extinguished,  the  ashes  scattered  to  the 
winds,  and  a  new  fire  was  kindled  with  flint  and  steel. 
On  a  subsequent  day,  men  dressed  in  fantastic  costumes 


1  Bo.i^le  and  Manning,  Tibet,  edited  the  Asiatic  Society  of  Bengal,  liii.  pt.  i. 
by  C.  K.  Marldiam,  p.  106  sq.  (1884),  p.  62. 

3  Scotland  and  Scotsmen  in  the  Eigh- 

2  E.  T.  Atlvinson,  "Notes  on  the  teenth  Century,  from  tlie  MSS.  of  Jchn 
History  of  Religion  in  the  Himalaya  of  Ramsay  of  Ochtertyre,  edited  by  Alex. 
the  North- West  ^xo^\ViCt%,''  Jounial  of     Allardyce  (Edinburgh,   1SS8),  ii.  439. 


Ill  SCAPEGOA  rS  195 

went  round  the  village,  gathering  the  sins  of  the  people. 
On  the  morning  of  the  last  day  of  the  festival,  two 
white  dogs,  decorated  with  red  paint,  wampum,  feathers, 
and  ribbons  were  led  out.  They  were  soon  strangled, 
and  hung  on  a  ladder.  Firing  and  yelling  succeeded, 
and  half  an  hour  later  the  dogs  were  taken  into  a 
house,  "where  the  peoples'  sins  were  transferred  to 
them."  The  dogs  were  afterwards  burnt  on  a  pyre  of 
wood.^  According  to  the  Rev.  Mr.  Kirkland,  who 
wrote  last  century,  the  ashes  of  the  pyre  upon  which 
one  of  the  white  dogs  was  burned  were  carried  through 
the  village  and  sprinkled  at  the  door  of  every  house.^ 
Formerly,  however,  as  we  have  seen,  the  Iroquois 
expulsion  of  evils  was  immediate  and  not  by  scape- 
goat.^ The  Jews  annually  laid  all  the  sins  of  the 
people  upon  the  head  of  a  goat  and  sent  it  away  into 
the  wilderness.^ 

The  scapegoat  upon  whom  the  sins  of  the  people 
are  periodically  laid,  may  also  be  a  human  being.  At 
Onitsha,  on  the  Ouorra  River,  two  human  beings  are 
annually  sacrificed  to  take  away  the  sins  of  the  land. 
The  victims  are  purchased  by  public  subscription. 
All  persons  who,  during  the  past  year,  have  fallen  into 
gross  sins,  such  as  incendiarism,  theft,  adultery,  witch- 
craft, etc.  are  expected  to  contribute  28  ngugas,  or  a  litde 
over  £2.     The  money  thus  collected  is  taken  into  the 

1  W.  M.  Beauchamp,  "  The  Iroquois  father  of  the  family  knocks  the  cock 
White  Dog  Feast,"  American  An-  thrice  against  his  own  head,  saying, 
tiqiiarian,  vii.  237.  "  I-et  this  cock  be  a  substitute  for  me, 

.,    „  ^      T-    1-.    •  1,*     ^.„r.,„n      Jet  it  take  my  place,  let  death  be  laid 

2  lb.   p.    2^6;    T.   Dwight,    J  ravels  \      -.    I       ■<  rr     1 
11,.   p.    ^j    ,                 b    ,                                 j^j^  ^Q^l      ^^jj   ^  happy  life   be- 

?;?  New  Ens;la7id  and  New    York,  iv.         1  '  ^W    ^        ,  „ 

'^  stowed     on     me    and    on    all    Israel. 

^°^*  Then  he  cuts  its  throat  and  dashes  the 

-  Above,  p.   165  sq.  I^ij-^l    violently   on    the    ground.       The 

*  Leviticus      xvi.       Modern       Jews  intestines  are  thrown  on  the  roof  of  the 

sacrifice  a  white  cock  on  the  eve  of  the  house.       The    flesh    of   the    cock    was 

Festival   of  Expiation,  nine  days  after  formerly  given  to  the  poor.      Buxtorf, 

the  beginning  of  their  New  Year.     The  Synagoga  Judaic  a,  z.  xxv. 


196  HUMAN  SCAPEGOATS  chap. 

interior  of  the  country  and  expended  in  the  purchase 
of  two  sickly  persons  "to  be  offered  as  a  sacrifice  for 
all  these  abominable  crimes — one  for  the  land  and  one 
for  the  river."  A  man  from  a  neighbouring  town  is 
hired  to  put  them  to  death.  The  sacrifice  of  one  of 
these  victims  was  witnessed  by  the  Rev.  J.  C.  Taylor 
on  27th  February  1858.  The  sufferer  was  a  woman, 
about  nineteen  or  twenty  years  of  age.  She  w^as 
dragged  alive  along  the  ground,  face  downwards,  from 
the  king's  house  to  the  river,  a  distance  of  two  miles. 
The  crowds  who  accompanied  her  cried  "Wickedness! 
wickedness!"  The  intention  was  "to  take  away  the 
iniquities  of  the  land.  The  body  was  dragged  along 
in  a  merciless  manner,  as  if  the  weight  of  all  their 
wickedness  was  thus  carried  away."^  In  Siam  it  was 
formerly  the  custom  on  one  day  of  the  year  to  single 
out  a  woman  broken  down  by  debauchery,  and  carry 
her  on  a  litter  through  all  the  streets  to  the  music  of 
drums  and  hautboys.  The  mob  insulted  her  and 
pelted  her  with  dirt  ;  and  after  having  carried  her 
through  the  whole  city,  they  threw  her  on  a  dunghill 
or  a  hedge  of  thorns  outside  the  ramparts,  forbidding 
her  ever  to  enter  the  walls  again.  They  believed  that 
the  woman  thus  drew  upon  herself  all  the  malign 
influences  of  the  air  and  of  evil  spirits.'-^  The  people 
of  Nias  offer  either  a  red  horse  or  a  buffalo  as  a  public 
sacrifice  to  purify  the  land  and  obtain  the  favour  of 
the  gods.  Formerly,  it  is  said,  a  man  was  bound  to 
the  same  stake  as  the  buffalo,  and  when  the  animal 
was  killed,  the   man  was  driven  away  ;   no  one   might 

1   S.  Crowther  and  J.  C.  Taylor,  The  {West  African   Countries  and  Teoples 

Gospel  on  the  Banks  of  t/ieA^ix'er,Y>Y>-?)'^2>-  P-   '^5  ^1-)  '^  entirely  from  Taylor. 
345.     Cp.  J.  F.  Schon  and  S.  Crowther,  ^  Turpin,     "History    of    Siam,"    in 

Journals,  p.  48  sq.      The  account  of  the  Pinkerton's    Voyages    and    Ti-avels,   ix. 

custom    by   J.    Africanus    B.     Horton  579. 


Ill  HUMAN  SCAPEGOATS  197 

receive  him,  converse  with  him,  or  give  him  food/ 
Doubtless  he  was  supposed  to  carry  away  the  sins  and 
misfortunes  of  the  people. 

In  Tibet  the  ceremony  of  the  scapegoat  is  marked 
by  some  peculiar  features.  The  Tibetan  New  Year 
begins  with  the  new  moon,  which  appears  about 
15th  February.  For  twenty -three  days  afterwards 
the  government  of  Lhasa,  the  capital,  is  taken  out 
of  the  hands  of  the  ordinary  rulers  and  entrusted  to 
the  monk  of  the  Debang  monastery  who  offers  to 
pay  the  highest  sum  for  the  privilege.  The  suc- 
cessful bidder  is  called  the  Jalno,  and  he  announces 
the  fact  in  person  through  the  streets  of  Lhasa, 
bearing  a  silver  stick.  Monks  from  all  the  neigh- 
bouring monasteries  and  temples  assemble  to  pay 
him  homage.  The  Jalno  exercises  his  authority 
in  the  most  arbitrary  manner  for  his  own  benefit,  as 
all  the  fines  which  he  exacts  are  his  by  purchase. 
The  profit  he  makes  is  about  ten  times  the  amount 
of  the  purchase  money.  His  men  go  about  the  streets 
in  order  to  discover  any  conduct  on  the  part  of  the 
inhabitants  that  can  be  found  fault  with.  Every 
house  in  Lhasa  is  taxed  at  this  time,  and  the  slightest 
fault  is  punished  with  unsparing  rigour  by  fines.  This 
severity  of  the  Jalno  drives  all  working  classes  out 
of  the  city  till  the  twenty -three  days  are  over. 
Meantime,  all  the  priests  flock  from  the  neighbourhood 
to  the  Machindranath  temple,  where  they  perform 
religious  ceremonies.  The  temple  is  a  very  large  one, 
standing  in  the  centre  of  the  city,  surrounded  by 
bazaars  and  shops.  The  idols  in  it  are  richly  inlaid 
with    gold    and    precious    stones.      Twenty -four    days 

1   Kodding,    "Die   Bataksche  Gotter,"    AUgemeine    Alissions-Zeitschrift,   xii 
(1885)  pp.  476,  47S. 


HUMAN  SCAPEGOATS 


after  the  Jalno  has  ceased  to  have  authority,  he 
assumes  it  again,  and  for  ten  days  acts  in  the  same 
arbitrary  manner  as  before.  On  the  first  of  the  ten 
days  the  priests  assemble  as  before  at  the  Machin- 
dranath  temple,  pray  to  the  gods  to  prevent  sickness 
and  other  evils  among  the  people,  "and,  as  a  peace- 
offering,  sacrifice  one  man.  The  man  is  not  killed 
purposely,  but  the  ceremony  he  undergoes  often 
proves  fatal. ^  Grain  is  thrown  against  his  head,  and 
his  face  is  painted  half  white,  half  black."  On  the 
tenth  day,  all  the  troops  in  Lhasa  march  to  the  temple 
and  form  in  line  before  it.  The  victim  is  brought 
lorth  from  the  temple  and  receives  small  donations 
from  the  assembled  multitude.  He  then  throws  dice 
with  the  Jalno.  If  the  victim  wins,  much  evil  is 
foreboded  ;  but  if  the  Jalno  wins,  there  is  great 
rejoicing,  for  it  is  then  believed  that  the  victim  has 
been  accepted  by  the  gods  to  bear  all  the  sins  of 
the  people  of  Lhasa.  Thereupon  his  face  is  painted 
half  white  and  half  black,  a  leathern  coat  is  put  on  him, 
and  he  is  marched  to  the  walls  of  the  city,  followed 
by  the  whole  populace,  hooting,  shouting,  and  firing 
volleys  after  him.  When  he  is  driven  outside  the  city, 
the  people  return,  and  the  victim  is  carried  to  the 
Same  monastery.  Should  he  die  shortly  afterwards, 
the  people  say  it  is  an  auspicious  sign  ;  but  if  not, 
he  is  kept  a  prisoner  at  the  monastery  for  a  whole 
year,  after  which  he  is  allowed  to  return  to  Lhasa." 
Human  scapegoats,  as  we  shall  see  presently,  were 


1  The  ceremony  referred  to  is  prob-  Journal  Royal  Geogr.  Soc.  xxxviii 
ably  the  one  performed  on  the  tenth  (1868)  pp.  167,  \']Osq.;  "  Four  Years' 
day,  as  described  in  the  text.  Journeying      throught      Great     Tibet 

by  one   of  the  Trans -Himalayan   Ex 

2  "  Report  of  a  Route  Survey  by  plorers,"  Proceed.  Poyal  Geogr.  Soc. 
Tundit —  from  Nepal  to  Lhasa,"  etc.,      N.S.  vii.  (1885)  p.  67  st/. 


HI  HUMAN  SCAPEGOATS  199 

well  known  in  classical  antiquity,  and  even  in  mediaeval 
Europe  the  custom  seems  not  to  have  been  wholly 
extinct.  In  the  town  of  Halberstadt  in  Thiiringen 
there  was  a  church  which  was  said  to  have  been 
founded  by  Charlemagne.  In  this  church  every  year 
a  man  was  chosen,  who  was  believed  to  be  stained 
with  heinous  sins.  On  the  first  day  of  Lent  he  was 
brought  to  the  church,  dressed  in  mourning  garb,  with 
his  head  muffled  up.  At  the  close  of  the  service  he 
was  turned  out  of  the  church.  During  the  forty  days 
of  Lent  he  perambulated  the  city  barefoot,  neither 
entering  the  churches  nor  speaking  to  any  one.  The 
canons  took  it  in  turn  to  feed  him.  After  midnight  he 
was  allowed  to  sleep  on  the  streets.  On  the  day 
before  Good  Friday,  after  the  consecration  of  the  holy 
oil,  he  was  readmitted  to  the  church  and  absolved 
from  his  sins.  The  people  gave  him  money.  He 
was  called  Adam,  and  was  now  believed  to  be  in  a 
state  of  innocence.^  At  Entlebuch  in  Switzerland, 
down  to  the  close  of  last  century,  the  custom  of 
annually  expelling  a  scapegoat  was  preserved  in  the 
ceremony  of  driving  "  Posterli  "  from  the  village  into 
the  lands  of  the  neighbouring  village.  "  Posterli  " 
was  represented  by  a  lad  disguised  as  an  old  witch  or 
as  a  goat  or  an  ass.  Amid  a  deafening  noise  of  horns, 
clarionets,  bells,  whips,  etc.  he  was  driven  out.  Some- 
times "  Posterli "  was  represented  by  a  puppet,  which 
was  drawn  in  a  sledge  and  left  in  a  corner  of  the 
neighbouring  village.  The  ceremony  took  place  on 
the  Thursday  evening  of  the  last  week  but  one  before 
Christmas.' 

Sometimes  the  scapegoat  is  a  divine  animal.     The 

1  Aeneas  Sylvius,  C/e;-a  (Bale,  1 571),  ^  Usener,       "  Italische       Mythen," 

p.  423  sq.  Rhei)iisches  Museum,   N.  F.    xxx.    198. 


SCAPEGOATS 


people  of  Malabar  share  the  Hindu  reverence  for  the 
cow,  to  kill  and  eat  which  "  they  esteem  to  be  a  crime 
as  heinous  as  homicide  or  wilful  murder."  Never- 
theless "  the  Bramans  transfer  the  sins  of  the  people 
into  one  or  more  Cows,  which  are  then  carry'd  away, 
both  the  Cows  and  the  Sins- wherewith  these  Beasts  are 
charged,  to  what  place  the  Braman  shall  appoint."  ^ 
When  the  ancient  Egyptians  sacrificed  a  bull,  they 
invoked  upon  its  head  all  the  evils  that  might  other- 
wise befall  themselves  and  the  land  of  Egypt,  and 
thereupon  they  either  sold  the  bull's  head  to  the 
Greeks  or  cast  it  into  the  river.^  Now,  it  cannot  be 
said  that  in  the  times  known  to  us  the  Egyptians 
worshipped  bulls  in  general,  for  they  seem  to  have 
commonly  killed  and  eaten  them.^  But  a  good  many 
circumstances  point  to  the  conclusion  that  originally 
all  cattle,  bulls  as  well  as  cows,  were  held  sacred  by 
the  Egyptians.  For  not  only  were  all  cows  esteemed 
holy  by  them  and  never  sacrificed,  but  even  bulls  might 
not  be  sacrificed  unless  they  had  certain  natural  marks  ; 
a  priest  examined  every  bull  before  it  was  sacrificed  ; 
if  it  had  the  proper  marks,  he  put  his  seal  on  the 
animal  in  token  that  it  might  be  sacrificed ;  and  if 
a  man  sacrificed  a  bull  which  had  not  been  sealed,  he 
was  put  to  death.  Moreover,  the  worship  of  the 
black  bulls  Apis  and  Mnevis,  especially  the  former, 
played  an  important  part  in  Egyptian  religion  ;  all 
bulls  that  died  a  natural  death  were  carefully  buried 
in  the  suburbs  of  the  cities,  and  their  bones  were  after- 
wards collected  from  all  parts  of  Egypt  and  buried  in  a 
single  spot ;  and  at  the  sacrifice  of  a  bull  in  the  great 

1  J.  Thomas  Phillips,  Accmmt  of  ihc  ^  Herodotus,  ii.    38-41  ;  Wilkinson, 

Keligion,  Matmers,  and  Learning  of  the  Mamiers  and  Ciistoms  of  the  Ancient 

People  of  Malabar,  pp.  6,  12  sq.  Egyptians,  iii.  403  sqq.  (ed.   1878). 

^  Herodotus,  ii.  39. 


SCAPEGOA  TS 


rites  of  I  sis  all  the  worshippers  beat  their  breasts  and 
mourned.^  On  the  whole,  then,  we  are  perhaps 
entitled  to  infer  that  bulls  were  originally,  as  cows 
were  always,  esteemed  sacred  by  the  Egyptians,  and 
that  the  slain  bull  upon  whose,  head  they  laid  the 
misfortunes  of  the  people  was  once  a  divine  scapegoat. 
It  seems  not  improbable  that  the  lamb  annually  slain 
by  the  Madis  of  Central  Africa  is  a  divine  scapegoat, 
and  the  same  supposition  may  partly  explain  the  Zuni 
sacrifice  of  the  turtle.- 

Lastly,  the  scapegoat  may  be  a  divine  man. 
Thus,  in  November  the  Gonds  of  India  worship 
Ghansyam  Deo,  the  protector  of  the  crops,  and  at 
the  festival  the  god  himself  is  said  to  descend  on 
the  head  of  one  of  the  worshippers,  who  is  suddenly 
seized  with  a  kind  of  fit  and,  after  staggering  about, 
rushes  off  into  the  jungle,  where  it  is  believed  that, 
if  left  to  himself,  he  would  die  mad.  As  it  is,  he  is 
brought  back,  but  does  not  recover  his  senses  for 
one  or  two  days.  "  The  idea  is,  that  one  man  is  thus 
singled  out  as  a  scapegoat  for  the  sins  of  the  rest  of  the 
village."^  In  the  temple  of  the  Moon  the  Albanians 
of  the  Eastern  Caucasus  kept  a  number  of  sacred 
slaves,  of  whom  many  were  inspired  and  prophesied. 
When  one  of  these  men  exhibited  more  than  usual 
symptoms  of  inspiration  and  wandered  solitary  up 
and  down  the  woods,  like  the  Gond  in  the  jungle,  the 
high  priest  had  him  bound  with  a  sacred  chain  and 
maintained  him  in  luxury  for  a  year.  At  the  end  of 
the  year  he  was  anointed  with  unguents  and  led  forth 
to  be  sacrificed.  A  man  whose  business  it  was  to 
slay  these  human  victims  and  to  whom  practice  had 

1  Herodotus,  I.e.  '^  Patijab  Notes  and  Queries,  ii.  No. 

2  See  above,  pp.  95  sqq.,  137  sq.  335. 


202  GENERAL  OBSERVATIONS  ON  chap. 

given  dexterity,  advanced  from  the  crowd  and  thrust 
a  sacred  spear  into  the  victim's  side,  piercing  his 
heart.  From  the  manner  in  which  the  slain  man  fell, 
omens  were  drawn  as  to  the  welfare  of  the  common- 
wealth. Then  the  body  was  carried  to  a  certain  spot 
where  all  the  people  stood  upon  it  as  a  purificatory 
ceremony.^  This  last  circumstance  clearly  indicates 
that  the  sins  of  the  people  were  transferred  to  the 
victim,  just  as  the  Jewish  priest  transferred  the  sins  of 
the  people  to  the  scapegoat  by  laying  his  hand  on  the 
animal's  head  ;  and  since  the  man  was  believed  to  be 
possessed  by  the  divine  spirit,  we  have  here  an 
undoubted  example  of  a  man -god  slain  to  take  away 
the  sins  and  misfortunes  of  the  people. 

The  foregoing  survey  of  the  custom  of  publicly 
expelling  the  accumulated  evils  of  a  village  or  district 
suggests  a  few  general  observations.  In  the  first 
place,  it  will  not  be  disputed  that  what  I  have  called 
the  immediate  and  the  mediate  expulsions  of  evil  are 
identical  in  intention  ;  in  other  words,  that  whether 
the  evils  are  conceived  of  as  invisible  or  as  embodied 
in  a  material  form,  is  a  circumstance  entirely  sub- 
ordinate to  the  main  object  of  the  ceremony,  which  is 
simply  to  effect  a  total  clearance  of  all  the  ills  that 
have  been  infesting  a  people.  If  any  link  were  wanting 
to  connect  the  two  kinds  of  expulsion,  it  would  be 
furnished  by  such  a  practice  as  that  of  sending  the 
evils  away  in  a  boat.  For  here,  on  the  one  hand,  the 
evils  are  invisible  and  intangible  ;  and,  on  the  other 
hand,  there  is  a  visible  and  tangible  vehicle  to  convey 
them  away.  And  a  scapegoat  is  nothing  more  than 
such  a  vehicle. 

1   Strabo,  xi.    4,  7.      For  the  custom   of  standing   upon    a   sacrificed    victim, 
cp.  Demosthenes,  p.  642  ;   Pausanias,  iii.  20,  9. 


Ill  EXPULSION  OF  EVILS  203 

In  the  second  place,  when  a  general  clearance  of 
evils  is  resorted  to  periodically,  the  interval  between 
the  celebrations  of  the  ceremony  is  commonly  a  year, 
and  the  time  of  year  when  the  ceremony  takes  place 
usually  coincides  with  some  well-marked  change  of 
season — such  as  the  close  of  winter  in  the  arctic  and 
temperate  zones,  and  the  beginning  or  end  of  the 
rainy  season  in  the  tropics.  The  increased  mortality 
which  such  climatic  changes  are  apt  to  produce, 
especially  amongst  ill-fed,  ill-clothed,  and  ill-housed 
savages,  is  set  down  by  primitive  man  to  the  agency 
of  demons,  who  must  accordingly  be  expelled.  Hence, 
in  New  Britain  and  Peru,  the  devils  are  or  were 
driven  out  at  the  beginning  of  the  rainy  season. 
When  a  tribe  has  taken  to  agriculture,  the  time  for 
the  general  expulsion  of  devils  is  naturally  made  to 
agree  with  one  of  the  great  epochs  of  the  agricultural 
year,  as  sowing  or  harvest  ;  but,  as  these  epochs 
themselves  often  coincide  with  changes  of  season,  it 
does  not  follow  that  the  transition  from  the  hunting  or 
pastoral  to  the  agricultural  life  involves  any  alteration 
in  the  time  of  celebrating  this  great  annual  rite. 
Some  of  the  agricultural  communities  of  India  and 
the  Hindoo  Koosh,  as  we  have  seen,  hold  their 
general  clearance  of  demons  at  harvest,  others  at 
sowing-time.  But,  at  whatever  season  of  the  year  it  is 
held,  the  general  expulsion  of  devils  commonly  marks 
the  beginning  of  the  new  year.  For,  before  entering 
on  a  new  year,  people  are  anxious  to  rid  themselves 
of  the  troubles  that  have  harassed  them  in  the  past  ; 
hence  the  fact  that  amongst  so  many  people — Iroquois, 
Tonquinese,  Siamese,  Tibetans,  etc. — the  beginning  of 
the  new  year  is  inaugurated  with  a  solemn  and  public 
banishment  of  evil  spirits. 


204  PERIODS  OF  LICENCE  chap. 

In  the  third  place,  it  is  to  be  observed  that  this 
public  and  periodic  expulsion  of  devils  is  commonly 
preceded  or  followed  by  a  period  of  general  licence, 
during  which  the  ordinary  restraints  of  society  are 
thrown  aside,  and  all  offences,  short  of  the  gravest,  are 
allowed  to  pass  unpunished.  In  Guinea  and  Tonquin 
the  period  of  licence  precedes  the  public  expulsion 
of  demons  ;  and  the  suspension  of  the  ordinary 
government  in  Lhasa  previous  to  the  expulsion  of 
the  scapegoat  is  perhaps  a  relic  of  a  similar  period 
of  universal  licence.  Amongst  the  Hos  the  period 
of  licence  follows  the  expulsion  of  the  devil.  Amongst 
the  Iroquois  it  hardly  appears  whether  it  preceded  or 
followed  the  banishment  of  evils.  In  any  case,  the 
extraordinary  relaxation  of  all  ordinary  rules  of  con- 
duct on  such  occasions  is  doubtless  to  be  explained 
by  the  general  clearance  of  evils  which  precedes  or 
follows  it.  On  the  one  hand,  when  a  general  riddance 
of  evil  and  absolution  from  all  sin  is  in  immediate 
prospect,  men  are  encouraged  to  give  the  rein  to 
their  passions,  trusting  that  the  coming  ceremony 
will  wipe  out  the  score  which  they  are  running  up 
so  fast.  On  the  other  hand,  when  the  ceremony 
has  just  taken  place,  men's  minds  are  freed  from 
the  oppressive  sense,  under  which  they  generally 
labour,  of  an  atmosphere  surcharged  with  devils  ; 
and  in  the  first  revulsion  of  joy  they  overleap  the 
limits  commonly  imposed  by  custom  and  morality. 
When  the  ceremony  takes  place  at  harvest-time,  the 
elation  of  feeling  which  it  excites  is  further  stimulated 
by  the  state  of  physical  wellbeing  produced  by  an 
abundant  supply  of  food.^ 

1  In   the    Dassera  festival,    as    cele-      another  instance  of  the  annual  expulsion 
brated   in   Nepaul,    we   seem    to    have      of  demons  preceded  by  a  time  of  licence. 


DIVINE  SCAPEGOATS 


205 


Fourthly,  the  employment  of  a  divine  man  or 
animal  as  a  scapegoat  is  especially  to  be  noted  ; 
indeed,  we  are  here  directly  concerned  with  the 
custom  of  banishing  evils  only  in  so  far  as  these 
evils  are  believed  to  be  transferred  to  a  god  who  is 
afterwards  slain.  It  may  be  suspected  that  the 
custom  of  employing  a  divine  man  or  animal  as  a 
public  scapegoat  is  much  more  widely  diffused  than 
appears  from  the  examples  cited.  For,  as  has 
already  been  pointed  out,  the  custom  of  killing  a  god 
dates  from  so  early  a  period  of  human  history  that 
in  later  ages,  even  when  the  custom  continues  to 
be  practised,  it  is  liable  to  be  misinterpreted.  The 
divine  character  of  the  animal  or  man  is  forgotten,  and 
he  comes  to  be  regarded  merely  as  an  ordinary  victim. 
This  is  especially  likely  to  be  the  case  when  it  is  a 
divine  man  who  is  killed.     For  when  a  nation  becomes 


The  festival  occurs  at  the  beginning  of 
October  and  lasts  ten  days.  "During 
its  continuance  there  is  a  general  holi- 
day among  all  classes  of  the  people. 
The  city  of  Kathmandu  at  this  time  is 
required  to  be  purified,  but  the  puri- 
fication is  effected  rather  by  prayer  than 
by  water-cleansing.  All  the  courts  of 
law  are  closed,  and  all  prisoners  in  jail 
are  removed  from  the  precincts  of  the 
city.  .  .  .  The  Kalendar  is  cleared, 
or  there  is  a  jail-delivery  always  at  the 
Dassera  of  all  prisoners."  This  seems 
a  trace  of  a  period  of  licence.  At  this 
time  "it  is  a  general  custom  for  masters 
to  make  an  annual  present,  either  of 
money,  clothes,  buffaloes,  goats,  etc., 
to  such  servants  as  have  given  satisfac- 
tion during  the  past  year.  It  is  in  this 
respect,  as  well  as  in  the  feasting  and 
drinking  which  goes  on,  something  like 
our  '  boxing-time  '  at  Christmas."  On 
the  seventh  day  at  sunset  there  is  a 
parade  of  all  the  troops  in  the  capital, 
including  the  artillery.  At  a  given 
signal  the  regiments  commence  firing. 


the  artillery  takes  it  up,  and  a  general 
firing  goes  on  for  about  twenty  minutes, 
when  it  suddenly  ceases.  This  prob- 
ably represents  the  expulsion  of  the 
demons.  "The  grand  cutting  of  the 
rice-crops  is  always  postponed  till  the 
Dassera  is  over,  and  commences  all 
over  the  valley  the  very  day  afterwards." 
See  the  description  of  the  festival  in 
Oldfield's  Sketches  from  Nipal,  ii.  342- 
351.  On  the  Dassera  in  India,  see 
Dubois,  Moeiirs,  Instihttions  et  Cere- 
tnonies  des  Penples  de  I'Inde,  ii.  329 
sqq.  Amongst  the  Wasuahili  of  East 
Africa  New  Year's  Day  was  formerly 
a  day  of  general  licence,  "  eveiy  man 
did  as  he  pleased.  Old  quarrels  were 
settled,  men  were  found  dead  on  the 
following  day,  and  no  inquiry  was 
instituted  about  the  matter. "  Ch.  New, 
Life,  Wanderings,  and  Labours  in 
Eastern  Africa,  p.  65.  In  Ashantee 
the  annual  festival  of  the  new  yams  is 
a  time  of  general  licence.  See  the  Note 
on  "  Offerings  of  first  fruits  "  at  the  end 
of  the  volume. 


2o6  DIVINE  SCAPEGOATS  chap. 

civilised,  if  it  does  not  drop  human  sacrifices  altogether, 
it  at  least  selects  as  victims  only  such  criminals  as 
would  be  put  to  death  at  any  rate.  Thus,  as  in  the 
Sacaean  festival  at  Babylon,  the  killing  of  a  god  may 
come  to  be  confounded  with  the  execution  of  a 
criminal. 

If  we  ask  why  a  dying  god  should  be  selected  to 
take  upon  himself  and  carry  away  the  sins  and  sorrows 
of  the  people,  it  may  be  suggested  that  in  the  practice 
of  using  the  divinity  as  a  scapegoat  we  have  a  combina- 
tion of  two  customs  which  were  at  one  time  distinct 
and  independent.  On  the  one  hand  we  have  seen 
that  it  has  been  customary  to  kill  the  human  or  animal 
god  in  order  to  save  his  divine  life  from  being  weakened 
by  the  inroads  of  age.  On  the  other  hand  we  have 
seen  that  it  has  been  customary  to  have  a  general 
expulsion  of  evils  and  sins  once  a  year.  Now,  if  it 
occurred  to  people  to  combine  these  two  customs,  the 
result  would  be  the  employment  of  the  dying  god  as  a 
scapegoat.  He  was  killed,  not  originally  to  take  away 
sin,  but  to  save  the  divine  life  from  the  degeneracy  of 
old  age  ;  but,  since  he  had  to  be  killed  at  any  rate, 
people  may  have  thought  that  they  might  as  well 
seize  the  opportunity  to  lay  upon  him  the  burden  of 
their  sufferings  and  sins,  in  order  that  he  might  bear 
it  away  with  him  to  the  unknown  world  beyond  the 
grave. 

The  use  of  the  divinity  as  a  scapegoat  clears  up 
the  ambiguity  which,  as  we  saw,  appeared  to  hang 
about  the  European  folk -custom  of  "carrying  out 
Death."  ^  Grounds  have  been  shown  for  believing 
that  in  this  ceremony  the  so  -  called  Death  was 
originally  the  spirit  of  vegetation,   who  was  annually 

1  See  above,  vol.  i.  p.  275  .f(/. 


Ill  DIVINE  SCAPEGOATS  207 

slain  in  spring,  in  order  that  he  might  come  to  Hfe 
again  with  all  the  vigour  of  youth.  But,  as  we  saw, 
there  are  certain  features  in  the  ceremony  which  are 
not  explicable  on  this  hypothesis  alone.  Such  are  the 
marks  of  joy  with  which  the  effigy  of  Death  is 
carried  out  to  be  buried  or  burnt,  and  the  fear  and 
abhorrence  of  it  manifested  by  the  bearers.  But  these 
features  become  at  once  intelligible  if  we  suppose  that 
the  Death  was  not  merely  the  dying  god  of  vegeta- 
tion, but  also  a  public  scapegoat,  upon  whom  were  laid 
all  the  evils  that  had  afflicted  the  people  during  the 
past  year.  Joy  on  such  an  occasion  is  natural  and 
appropriate  ;  and  if  the  dying  god  appears  to  be  the 
object  of  that  fear  and  abhorrence  which  are  properly 
due  not  to  himself,  but  to  the  sins  and  misfortunes 
with  which  he  is  laden,  this  arises  merely  from  the 
difficulty  of  distinguishing  or  at  least  of  marking 
the  distinction  between  the  bearer  and  the  burden. 
When  the  burden  is  of  a  baleful  character,  the  bearer 
of  it  will  be  feared  and  shunned  just  as  much  as  if  he 
were  himself  instinct  with  those  dangerous  properties 
of  which,  as  it  happens,  he  is  only  the  vehicle. 
Similarly  we  have  seen  that  disease-laden  and  sin- 
laden  boats  are  dreaded  and  shunned  by  East  Indian 
peoples.^  Again,  the  view  that  in  these  popular 
customs  the  Death  is  a  scapegoat  as  well  as  a  repre- 
sentative of  the  divine  spirit  of  vegetation  derives  some 
support  from  the  circumstance  that  its  expulsion  is 
always  celebrated  in  spring  and  chiefly  by  Slavonic 
peoples.  For  the  Slavonic  year  began  in  spring  ;^  and 
thus,  in  one  of  its  aspects,  the  ceremony  of  "carrying 
out   Death "  would  be  an  example  of  the  widespread 

^  Above,  pp.  186  5(7. ,   192. 

2  H.  Usener,  "  Italische  'bJiyXhtn,"  Rheiiiisches  Musetitn,  N.  F.  (iS75)xxx.  194. 


2o8  THE  OLD  MARS 


custom  of  expelling  the  accumulated  evils  of  the  past 
year  before  entering  on  a  new  one. 

We  are  now  prepared  to  notice  the  use  of  the  scape- 
goat in  classical  antiquity.  Every  year  on  the  14th 
of  March  a  man  clad  in  skins  was  led  in  procession 
through  the  streets  of  Rome,  beaten  with  long  white 
rods,  and  driven  out  of  the  city.  He  was  called  Mamurius 
Veturius,^  that  is,  "the  old  Mars,"  ^  and  as  the  ceremony 
took  place  on  the  day  preceding  the  first  full  moon  of 
the  old  Roman  year  (which  began  on  ist  March),  the 
skin-clad  man  must  have  represented  the  Mars  of  the 
past  year,  who  was  driven  out  at  the  beginning  of  a 
new  one.  Now  Mars  was  originally  not  a  god  of  war 
but  of  vegetation.  For  it  was  to  Mars  that  the 
Roman  husbandman  prayed  for  the  prosperity  of  his 
corn  and  his  vines,  his  fruit-trees  and  his  copses;^  it 
was  to  Mars  that  the  priestly  college  of  the  Arval 
Brothers,  whose  business  it  was  to  sacrifice  for  the 
growth  of  the  crops,*  addressed  their  petitions  almost 
exclusively  ;  ^  and  it  was  to  Mars,  as  we  saw,*^  that  a 
horse  was  sacrificed  in  October  to  secure  an  abundant 
harvest.      Moreover,  it  was  to  Mars,  under  his  title  of 


1  Joannes  Lydus,  De  mensibus,  iii.  scher,  Apollon  und  Mars,  p.  27  ; 
29,  iv.  36.  Lydus  places  the  expul-  Preller,  Roniische  Mythologie,^  i.  360  ; 
sion  on  the  Ides  of  March,  that  is  15th  Vanicek,  Griechisch-lateinisches  etymo- 
March.  But  this  seems  to  be  a  mis-  logisches  Worterbuch,  p.  715.  The 
take.  See  Usener,  "Italische  Mythen,"  three  latter  scholars  take  Veturius 
Rheinisches  Musetini,  xxx.  209  sqq.  as  =  annuus,  because  veins  is  etymo- 
Again,  Lydus  does  not  expressly  say  logically  equivalent  to  ^tos.  But,  as 
that  Mamurius  Veturius  was  driven  Usener  argues,  it  seems  quite  unallow- 
out  of  the  city,  but  he  implies  it  able  to  take  the  Greek  meaning  of  the 
by    mentioning    the    legend     that    his  word  instead  of  the  Latin. 

mythical    prototype   was    beaten    with  3  Q.2X0,  De  agri  cult.  141. 

rods    and    expelled    the    city.      Lastly,  .   ,,            n    /•            1  .■             o 

^     ,           ,       '     ..        ^,                  TM  Varro,  De  lins'tia  latina,  v.  aq. 

Lydus  only  mentions  the  name  Mamu-  ;              a                  >          j 

rius.       But    the    full    name   Mamurius  ^  See  the  song  of  the  Arval  Brothers 

Veturius  is  preserved  by  Varro,  Ling.  ir^  Ada  Fratrum  Arvalmm,  eA.Utnzen, 

Lat.    vi.    45;    Festus,    ed.    Miiller,    p.  P-    26    sq.;     Wordsworth,     Fragments 

131  ;    Plutarch,  Numa,  13.  and  Specimens  of  Early  Latin,  p.  158. 

2  Usener,  op.   cit.   p.    z\2  sq.;  Ros-  •*  Above,  p.  64. 


THE  OLD  MARS  209 


"Mars  of  the  woods"  {Mars  Silvamts)  that  farmers 
offered  sacrifice  for  the  welfare  of  their  cattle/     We 
have  already  seen  that  cattle  are  commonly  supposed 
to  be  under  the  special  patronage  of  tree-gods.^     Once 
more,  the  fact  that  the  vernal  month   of  March  was 
dedicated  to  Mars  seems  to  point  him  out  as  the  deity 
of  the  sprouting  vegetation.     Thus  the  Roman  custom 
of  expelling  the   old   Mars    at   the  beginning  of  the 
New  Year   in  spring    is   identical  with   the   Slavonic 
custom  of  "carrying   out    Death,"   if  the  view   here 
taken   of  the   latter   custom    is  correct.      The    simil- 
arity of  the  Roman  and  Slavonic   customs  has  been 
already  remarked  by  scholars,  who  appear,  however,  to 
have  taken  Mamurius  Veturius  and  the  corresponding 
figures  in  the  Slavonic  ceremonies  to  be  representatives 
of  the  old  year  rather  than  of  the  old  god  of  vegeta- 
tion.^    It  is  possible  that  ceremonies  of  this  kind  may 
have  come  to  be  thus  interpreted  in  later  times  even 
by  the  people  who  practised  them.      But  the  personifi- 
cation of  a  period  of  time  is  too  abstract  an  idea  to 
be   primitive.       However,   in    the   Roman,   as   in  the 
Slavonic,    ceremony,    the  representative    of   the    god 
appears  to  have  been  treated  not  only  as  a  deity  of 
vegetation    but   also  as    a   scapegoat.      His  expulsion 
implies  this  ;  for  there  is  no  reason  why  the  god  of  vege- 
tation, as  such,  should  be  expelled  the  city.      But  it  is 
otherwise  if  he  is  also  a  scapegoat ;  it  then  becomes 
necessary  to  drive  him  beyond  the  boundaries,  that  he 
may  carry  his  sorrowful  burden  away  to  other  lands. 
And,  in  fact,  Mamurius  Veturius  appears  to  have  been 


1  Cato,  De  agri  cult.  83.  49  ;    Usener,  op.    cit.     The  ceremony 

2  Above,  vol.  i.  p.  70  sqq.  p.   105  sq.  also    closely   resembles    the    Highland 

3  Preller,   Rbmische    Mythologie,^  i.  New  Year  ceremony  described  above, 
360;  Rosscher,  Apollon  und  Mars,  p.  p.  145  sq. 

VOL.  II  P 


HUMAN  SCAPEGOATS 


driven  away  to  the  land  of  the   Oscans,  the  enemies 
of  Rome.^ 

The  ancient  Greeks  were  also  familiar  with  the  use 
of  a  human  scapegoat.  At  Plutarch's  native  town  of 
Chaeronea  in  Boeotia,  there  was  a  ceremony  of  this  kind 
performed  by  the  chief  magistrate  at  the  Town  Hall,  and 
by  each  householder  at  his  own  home.  It  was  called 
the  "expulsion  of  hunger."     A  slave  was  beaten  with 


1  Propertius,  v.  2,  61  sq.  ;  Usener, 
op.  cit.  p.  210.  One  of  the  functions 
of  the  Salii  or  dancing  priests,  who 
during  March  went  up  and  down  the 
city  dancing,  singing,  and  clashing  their 
swords  against  their  shields  (Livy,  i. 
20  ;  Plutarch,  Numa,  13  ;  Dionysius 
Halicarn.  Aiitiq.  ii.  70)  may  have 
been  to  rout  out  the  evils  or  demons 
from  all  parts  of  the  city,  as  a  prepara- 
tion for  transferring  them  to  the  scape- 
goat Mamurius  Veturius.  Similarly, 
as  we  have  seen  (above,  p.  194  sq.), 
among  the  Iroquois,  men  in  fantastic 
costume  went  about  collecting  the  sins 
of  the  people  as  a  preliminary  to  trans- 
ferring them  to  the  scapegoat  dogs. 
We  have  had  many  examples  of  armed 
men  rushing  about  the  streets  and  houses 
to  drive  out  demons  and  evils  of  all 
kinds.  The  blows  which  were  showered 
on  Mamurius  Veturius  seem  to  have 
been  administered  by  the  Salii  (Servius 
on  Virgil,  Aen.  vii.  188  ;  Minucius 
Felix,  24,  3  ;  Preller,  Rom.  Myth."^ 
i.  360,  7iote  I  ;  Rosscher,  Apolloit  iind 
Mars,  p.  49).  The  reason  for  beating 
the  scapegoat  will  be  explained  pre- 
sently. As  priests  of  Mars,  the  god  of 
agriculture,  the  Salii  probably  had  also 
certain  agricultural  functions.  They 
were  named  from  the  remarkable  leaps 
which  they  made.  Now  dancing  and 
leaping  high  are  common  sympathetic 
charms  to  make  the  crops  grow  high. 
See  Peter,  Volks/humliches  aiis  Oester- 
reichisch  Schlesicn,  ii.  266  ;  E.  Meier, 
Deutsche  Sagen,  Sit  ten  utid  Gebriitiche 
aiis  Schwahen,  p.  499,  No.  333  ;  Reins- 
berg- Diiringsfeld,  Fest  -  Kalender  aus 
Bohmen,  p.  49 ;  O.  Knoop,  Volkssa^en, 
etc.,  aus  detn  ostlichen  Hinterpommem, 


p.  176,  No.  197  ;  E.  Sommer,  Sagen, 
Mdyxhen  tatd  Gebrduche  aus  Sachsen 
und  Thiiringen,  p.  148  ;  Witzschel, 
Sagen,  Sitteti  tind  Gebrduche  aus  Thiir- 
ingen, p.  190,  No.  13  ;  Woeste,  Volks- 
iiberlieferungeti  in  der  Grafschaft  Mark, 
p.  56  ;  Bavaria,  ii.  298  ;  id.,  iv.  Abth. 
ii.  pp.  379,  382  ;  Heinrich,  Agrarische 
Sitten  u.  Gebrduche  unter  den  Sachsen 
Siebenbiirgens,  p.  1 1  sq.  ;  Schulenberg, 
Wendische  Volkssagen  tutd  Gebrduche, 
p.  252  ;  Wuttke,  Der  deutsche  Volks- 
aberglaube,'^  §  657  ;  Jahn,  Die  deutsche 
Opfergebrduche  bei  Ackerbau  nnd  Vieh- 
zucht,  p.  194  sq.  ;  cp.  Schott,  Walach- 
ische  iMdhrchen,  p.  301  sq.  ;  Gerard, 
The  Land  beyond  the  Forest,  i.  264  ; 
Cieza  de  Leon,  Travels  (Hakluyt  Soc. 
1864),  p.  413.  Was  it  one  of  the 
functions  of  the  Salii  to  dance  and  leap 
on  the  helds  at  the  spring  or  autumn 
sowing,  or  at  both?  The  dancing  pro- 
cessions of  the  Salii  took  place  in 
October  as  well  as  in  March  (Mar- 
quardt,  Sacralwesen,^  p.  ^'^6  sq.),  and 
the  Romans  sowed  both  in  spring  and 
autumn  (Columella,  ii.  9,  6  sq^  In 
their  song  the  Salii  mentioned  Saturnus 
or  Saeturnus  the  god  of  sowing  (Festus, 
p.  325,  ed.  Miiller.  Saeturnus  is  an 
emendation  of  Ritschl's.  See  Words- 
worth, Fragynents  and  Specimens  of 
Early  Latin,  p.  405).  The  weapons 
borne  by  the  Salii,  while  effective 
against  demons  in  general,  may  have 
been  especially  directed  against  the 
demons  who  steal  the  seed  corn  or  the 
ripe  grain.  Compare  the  Khond  and 
Hindoo  Koosh  customs  described 
above,  p.  173.  In  Western  Africa  the 
field  labours  of  tilling  and  sowing  are 
sometimes  accompanied   by  dances   of 


IN  ANCIENT  GREECE 


211 


rods  of  the  agnus  castus,  and  turned  out  of  doors  with 
the  words,  "  Out  with  hunger,  and  in  with  wealth  and 
health."  When  Plutarch  held  the  office  of  chief  magis- 
trate of  his  native  town  he  performed  this  ceremony  at 
the  Town  Hall,  and  he  has  recorded  the  discussion  to 
which  the  custom  afterwards  gave  rise.^  The  ceremony 
closely  resembles  the  Japanese,  Hindoo,  and  Highland 
customs  already  described,^ 


armed  men  on  the  field.  See  Labat, 
Voyage  du  Chevalier  des  Marchais  en 
Guinee,  Isles  voisines,  et  a  Cayenne,  ii. 
p.  99  of  the  Paris  ed.,  p.  80  of  the 
Amsterdam  ed.  ;  Olivier  de  Sanderval, 
De  VAtlantique  an  Niger  par  le  Fotclah- 
Djallon  (Paris,  1883),  p.  230.  In 
Calicut  (Southern  India)  "they  plough 
the  land  with  oxen  as  we  do,  and  when 
they  sow  the  rice  in  the  field  they  have 
all  the  instruments  of  the  city  continu- 
ally sounding  and  making  merry.  They 
also  have  ten  or  twelve  men  clothed 
like  devils,  and  these  unite  in  making 
great  rejoicing  with  the  players  on  the 
instruments,  in  order  that  the  devil 
may  make  that  rice  very  productive." 
Varthema,  Travels  (Hakluyt  Soc. 
1863),  p.  166  sq.  The  resemblance 
of  the  Salii  to  the  sword -dancers  of 
northern  Europe  has  been  pointed  out 
by  K.  Miillenhoff,  "Ueberden  Schwert- 
tanz,"  in  Festgaben  fiir  Gustav  Homeyer 
(Berlin,  1871).  In  England  the  Morris 
Dancers  who  accompanied  the  proces- 
sion of  the  plough  through  the  streets 
on  Plough  Monday  (the  first  Monday 
after  Twelfth  Day)  sometimes  wore 
swords  (Brand,  Fopidar  Antiquities, 
i.  505,  Bohn's  ed.),  and  sometimes 
they  "  wore  small  bunches  of  corn  in 
their  hats,  from  which  the  wheat  was 
soon  shaken  out  by  the  ungainly  jump- 
ing which  they  called  dancing.  .  .  . 
Bessy  rattled  his  box  and  danced  so 
high  that  he  showed  his  worsted  stock- 
ings and  corduroy  breeches."  Chambers, 
Book  of  Days,  i.  94.  It  is  to  be  observed 
that  in  the  "Lord  of  Misrule,"  who 
reigned  from  Christmas  till  Twelfth 
Night  (see  Brand,  Popular  Antiquities, 
i.   497  sqq.),  we  have  a  clear  trace  of 


one  of  those  periods  of  general  licence 
and  suspension  of  ordinary  government 
which  so  commonly  occur  at  the  end 
of  the  old  year  or  beginning  of  the 
new  one  in  connection  with  a  general 
expulsion  of  evils.  The  fact  that  this 
period  of  licence  immediately  preceded 
the  procession  of  the  Morris  Dancers 
on  Plough  Monday  seems  to  indicate 
that  the  functions  of  these  dancers 
were  like  those  which  I  have  attributed 
to  the  Salii.  But  the  parallel  cannot 
be  drawn  out  here.  Cp.  meantime 
Dyer,  British  Popular  Customs,  pp. 
31,  39.  The  Salii  were  said  to  have 
been  founded  by  Morrius,  King  of 
Veii  (Servius  on  Virgil,  Aen.  viii.  285). 
Morrius  seems  to  be  etymologically  the 
same  with  Mamuriusa.nCi  Mars(\]%ex\tx, 
Italische  Mythen,  p.  213).  Can  the 
English  Morris  (in  Alorris  dancers)  be 
the  same?  Analogy  suggests  that  at 
Rome  the  Saturnalia,  which  fell  in 
December  when  the  Roman  year  began 
in  January,  may  have  been  cele- 
brated in  February  when  the  Roman 
year  began  in  March.  Thus  at  Rome, 
as  in  so  many  places,  the  public  ex- 
pulsion of  evils  at  the  New  Year  would 
be  preceded  by  a  period  of  general 
licence,  such  as  the  Saturnalia  was.  A 
trace  of  the  former  celebration  of  the 
Saturnalia  in  February  or  the  beginning 
of  March  may  perhaps  be  seen  in  the 
Matronalia,  celebrated  on  1st  March, 
at  which  mistresses  feasted  their  slaves, 
just  as  masters  feasted  theirs  at  the  Sa- 
turnalia. Macrobius,  Saturn,  i.  12,  7  ; 
Solinus,  i.  35,  p.  13,  ed.  Mommsen  ; 
Joannes  Lydus,  De  tnensibus,  iii.   15. 

1  Plutarch,  Quaest.  Conviv.  vi.  8. 

2  See  above,  pp.  176,  194. 


HUMAN  SCAPEGOATS 


But  in  civilised  Greece  the  custom  of  the  scapegoat 
took  darker  forms  than  the  innocent  rite  over  which 
the  amiable  and  pious  Plutarch  presided.  Whenever 
Marseilles,  one  of  the  busiest  and  most  brilliant  of  Greek 
colonies,  was  ravaged  by  a  plague,  a  man  of  the  poorer 
classes  used  to  offer  himself  as  a  scapegoat.  For  a 
whole  year  he  was  maintained  at  the  public  expense, 
being  fed  on  choice  and  pure  food.  At  the  expiry  of 
the  year  he  was  dressed  in  sacred  garments,  decked 
with  holybranches,  and  led  through  the  whole  city,  while 
prayers  were  uttered  that  all  the  evils  of  the  people 
might  fall  on  his  head.  He  was  then  cast  out  of  the 
city.^  The  Athenians  regularly  maintained  a  number 
of  degraded  and  useless  beings  at  the  public  expense  ; 
and  when  any  calamity,  such  as  plague,  drought,  or 
famine  befell  the  city,  they  sacrificed  two  of  these  out- 
casts as  scapegoats.  One  of  the  victims  was  sacrificed 
for  the  men  and  the  other  for  the  women.  The  former 
wore  round  his  neck  a  string  of  black,  the  latter  a 
string  of  white  figs.  Sometimes,  it  seems,  the  victim 
slain  on  behalf  of  the  women  was  a  woman.  They  were 
led  about  the  city  and  then  sacrificed,  apparently  by 
being  stoned  to  death  outside  the  city."  But  such 
sacrifices  were  not  confined  to  extraordinary  occasions 
of  public  calamity  ;  it  appears  that  every  year,  at  the 
festival  of  the  Thargelia  in  May,  two  victims,  one  for 
the  men  and  one  for  the  women,  were  led  out  of  Athens 
and  stoned  to  death. ^ 


1  Servius  on  Virgil,  Acii.  iii.  57,  That  they  were  stoned  is  an  inference 
from  Petronius.  from  Harpocration.      See  next  note. 

2  Helladius,  in  Photius,  Bibliotheca,  ^  Harpocration,  s.v.  (papfxaKos,  who 
p.  534  A,  ed.  Bekker  ;  Schol.  on  Aristo-  says  5vo  dv8pas  'Xd-qv-qaLv  i^rjyov 
phanes,  Frogs,  734,  and  on  Knights,  Kaddpaia  eao/xevovs  Ttjs  TriXews  ev  tois 
1 1 36;  Hesychius,  s.v.  (papfiaKoi  ;  QapyqXloLs,  'iva  fih  inrep  tQiv  iv^pHbv,  'iva 
cp.  Suidas,  s.vv.  Kddap/j.a,  4>apfi.aK6s,  5^  i;7r^p  tQv  yvvaiKuiv.  He  does  not 
and   4>apfiaKovs ;    Lysias,   Orat.   vi.   53.  expressly  state  that  they  were  put  to 


IN  ANCIENT  GREECE  213 


From  the  Lover's  Leap,  a  white  bluff  at  the 
southern  end  of  their  island,  the  Leucadians  used 
annually  to  hurl  a  criminal  into  the  sea  as  a  scape- 
goat. But  to  lighten  his  fall  they  fastened  live  birds 
and  feathers  to  him,  and  a  flotilla  of  small  boats  waited 
below  to  catch  him  and  convey  him  beyond  the  bound- 
ary/ Doubtless  these  humane  precautions  were  a 
mitigation  of  an  earlier  custom  of  flinging  the  scapegoat 
into  the  sea  to  drown.  The  custom  of  the  scapegoat 
as  practised  by  the  Greeks  of  Asia  Minor  in  the  sixth 
century  B.C.  was  as  follows.  When  a  city  suffered 
from  plague,  famine,  or  other  public  calamity,  an  ugly 
or  deformed  person  was  chosen  to  take  upon  himself 
all  the  evils  by  which  the  city  was  afflicted.  He 
was  brought  to  a  suitable  place  where  dried  figs,  a 
barley  loaf,  and  cheese  were  put  into  his  hand.  These 
he  ate.  Then  he  was  beaten  seven  times  upon  his 
genital  organs  with  squills  and  branches  of  the  wild 
fig  and  other  wild  trees.  Afterwards  he  was  burned 
on  a  pyre  constructed  of  the  wood  of  forest  trees ;  and 
his  ashes  were  cast  into  the  sea."  A  similar  custom 
appears  to  have  been  annually  celebrated  by  the  Asiatic 
Greeks  at  the  harvest  festival  of  the  Thargelia.^ 

In  the  ritual  just  described  the  beating  of  the 
victim  with  squills,  branches  of  the  wild  fig,  etc., 
cannot  have  been  intended  to  aggravate  his  sufferings, 
otherwise  any  stick  would  have  been  good  enough  to 

death  ;  but  as  he   says  that  the  cere-  the  edge  of  the  cliff,  sometimes  flung 

mony  was  an  imitation  of  the  execution  themselves  down  in  this  way. 

of  a  mythical  Pharmacus  who  was  stoned  2  Xzetzes,     Chiliades,     v.     726-761. 

to  death,  we  may  infer  that  the  victims  Tzetzes's  authority  is  the  satyrical  poet 

were   killed  by  being  stoned.      Suidas  Hipponax. 

{sv.  <pdpfj.aKos)  copies  Harpocration.  ^  This  may  be  inferred  from  the  verse 

1  Strabo,  x.   2,  9.       I  do  not  know  of   Hipponax,    quoted    by    Athenaeus, 

what    authority    Wordsworth    {Greece,  370   B,  where  for  (pap/j-aKov  we  should 

Pictorial,   Historical,  and  Descriptive,  perhaps  read  (papfiaKov  with   Schneide- 

p.  354)  has  for  saying  that  the  priests  win   {Poelae   lyr.    Gr.^   ed.    Bergk,    ii. 

of  Apollo,   whose    temple    stood    near  763). 


214  BEATING  THE 


beat  him  with.  The  true  meaning  of  this  part  of  the 
ceremony  has  been  explained  by  W.  Mannhardt/  He 
points  out  that  the  ancients  attributed  to  squills  a 
magical  power  of  averting  evil  influences,  and  accord- 
ingly hung  them  up  at  the  doors  of  their  houses  and 
made  use  of  them  in  purificatory  rites.^  Hence  the 
Arcadian  custom  of  beating  the  image  of  Pan  with 
squills  at  a  festival  or  whenever  the  hunters  returned 
empty-handed,^  must  have  been  meant,  not  to  punish 
the  god,  but  to  purify  him  from  the  harmful  influences 
which  were  impeding  him  in  the  exercise  of  his  divine 
functions  as  a  god  who  should  supply  the  hunter  with 
game.  Similarly  the  object  of  beating  the  human 
scapegoat  on  the  genital  organs  with  squills,  etc.,  must 
have  been  to  release  his  reproductive  energies  from 
any  restraint  or  spell  under  which  they  might  be  laid 
by  demoniacal  or  other  malignant  agency  ;  and  as  the 
Thargelia  at  which  he  was  annually  sacrificed  was  an 
early  harvest  festival,''  we  must  recognise  in  him  a 
representative  of  the  creative  and  fertilising  god  of 
vegetation.  The  representative  of  the  god  was 
annually  slain  for  the  purpose  I  have  indicated,  that 
of  maintaining  the  divine  life  in  perpetual  vigour, 
untainted  by  the  weakness  of  age ;  and  before  he  was 
put  to  death  it  was  not  unnatural  to  stimulate  his 
reproductive  powers  in  order  that  these  might  be 
transmitted  in  full  activity  to  his  successor,  the  new 
god  or  new  embodiment  of  the  old  god,  who  was 
doubdess  supposed  immediately  to  take  the  place  of 


1  See  his  Mytholog.  Forschnngcn,  p.  3  Theocritus,  vii.  io6  sqq.  with  the 

"3  -f-?^-.  especially  123  sq.   133.  scholiast. 

^  Pliny,      Nat.      Hist.       xx.       loi  ; 
Dioscorides,    De    mat.    med.    ii.    202  ;  ■»  Cp.    Aug.    Mommsen,   Hcortologie, 

Lucian,   Necyom.    7;    id.,   Alexander,  a,\^  sqq.;  W.  Mannhardt,  A.  IV.  F.  p. 

47;   T\i^o^\\x7)&\.\x%,  Stiperstitious  Man.  215. 


DIVINE  SCAPEGOA  T  215 


the  one  slain. ^  Similar  reasoning  would  lead  to  a 
similar  treatment  of  the  scapegoat  on  special  occasions, 
such  as  drought  or  famine.  If  the  crops  did  not 
answer  to  the  expectation  of  the  husbandman,  this 
would  be  attributed  to  some  failure  in  the  generative 
powers  of  the  god  whose  function  it  was  to  produce 
the  fruits  of  the  earth.  It  might  be  thought  he  was 
under  a  spell  or  was  growing  old  and  feeble.  Accord- 
ingly he  was  slain  in  the  person  of  his  representative, 
with  all  the  ceremonies  already  described,  in  order 
that,  born  young  again,  he  might  infuse  his  own 
youthful  vigour  into  the  stagnant  energies  of  nature. 
On  the  same  principle  we  can  understand  why 
Mamurius  Veturius  was  beaten  with  rods,  why  the 
slave  at  the  Chaeronean  ceremony  was  beaten  with 
the  agims  castus  (a  tree  to  which  magical  properties 
were  ascribed),^  why  the  effigy  of  Death  in  north 
Europe  is  assailed  with  sticks  and  stones,  and  why  at 
Babylon  the  criminal  who  played  the  god  was  scourged 
before  he  was  crucified.  The  purpose  of  the  scourg- 
ing was  not  to  intensify  the  agony  of  the  divine 
sufferer,  but  on  the  contrary  to  dispel  any  malignant 
influences  by  which  at  the  supreme  moment  he  might 
conceivably  be  beset. 

The  interpretation  here  given  to  the  custom  of 
beating  the  human  scapegoat  with  certain  plants 
Is  supported  by  many  analogies.  With  the  same 
intention  some  of  the  Brazilian  Indians  beat  them- 
selves on  the  genital  organs  with  an  aquatic  plant, 
the  white  anmga,  three  days  before  or  after  the  new 

1  At    certain    sacrifices    in    Yucatan  Bourbourg  (Paris,  1864)  p.  167.     Was 

blood  was  drawn  from  the  genitals  of  a  the   original  intention    of  this   rite   to 

human  victim  and  smeared  on  the  face  transfuse  into  the  god  a  fresh  supply  of 

of  the  idol.      De  Landa,  Relation  des  reproductive  energy  ? 
choses   de     Yucatan,    ed.    Brasseur    de  -  Aelian,  Nat.  Anim.  ix.  26. 


2i6  BEATING  PEOPLE 


inoon.^  We  have  already  had  examples  of  the  custom 
of  beating  sick  people  with  the  leaves  of  certain  plants 
or  with  branches  in  order  to  rid  them  of  the  noxious 
influences.^  At  the  autumn  festival  in  Peru  people 
used  to  strike  each  other  with  torches  saying,  "  Let  all 
harm  go  away."^  Indians  of  the  Ouixos,  in  South 
America,  before  they  set  out  on  a  long  hunting 
expedition,  cause  their  wives  to  whip  them  with 
nettles,  believing  that  this  renders  them  fleeter  and 
helps  them  to  overtake  the  peccaries.  They  resort  to 
the  same  proceeding  as  a  cure  for  sickness.*  At  Mowat 
in  New  Guinea  small  boys  are  beaten  lightly  with 
sticks  during  December  "  to  make  them  grow  strong 
and  hardy."  ^  In  Central  Europe  a  similar  custom  is 
very  commonly  observed  in  spring.  On  the  ist  of 
March  the  Albanians  strike  men  and  beasts  with 
cornel  branches,  believing  that  this  is  very  good  for 
their  health.^  On  Good  Friday  and  the  two  previous 
days  people  in  Croatia  and  Slavonia  take  rods  with 
them  to  church,  and  when  the  service  is  over  they  beat 
each  other  "fresh  and  healthy."^  In  some  parts  of 
Russia  people  returning  from  the  church  on  Palm 
Sunday  beat  the  children  and  servants  who  have  stayed 
at  home  with  palm  branches,  saying,  "  Sickness  into 
the  forest,  health  into  the  bones."  ^  In  Germany  the 
custom  is  widely  known  as  Sc/wzeckostern,  being 
observed    at    Eastertide.      People    beat    each    other, 

1  De   Santa -Anna   Nery,    Folk-lore  eqiiatoriali  lungo  il  Napo  ed  il  Jiume 
Bresilien  (Paris,  1889)  p.  253.  delle  Amazzo}ii  {W\\zxi,  1854),  p.   118. 

2  Above,  pp.   \\%  sq.  187.     Compare  ^  Ed.     Beardmore,     Anthropological 
Plutarch,  Paralhla,  35,  where  a  woman  Notes  collected  at  Mowat,  Dandai,  New 
is  represented  as  going  from  house  to  Guinea  (1888)  (in  manuscript), 
housestriking  sick  people  with  a  hammer  ^  Hahn,     Albaiiesische     Stitdien,     i. 
and  bidding  them  be  whole.  155. 

3  Acosta,   History  of  the  Indies,   ii.  7     F.     S.     Krauss,      A'roatien     tmd 
375  (Hakluyt  Soc. )    See  above,  p.  169.  .S/aew;?t'«  (Vienna,  1889),  p.   108. 

*  Osculati,  Esplorazione  delle  regioni  »  w^  Mannhardt,  B.  K.  p.  257. 


AS  A  CHARM  217 


especially  with  fresh  green  twigs  of  the  birch.  The 
beating  is  supposed  to  bring  good  luck  ;  the  person 
beaten  will,  it  is  believed,  be  free  of  vermin  during 
the  summer,  or  will  have  no  pains  in  his  back  or  his 
legs  for  a  year,^ 

If  the  view  here  taken  of  the  Greek  scapegoat  is 
correct,  it  obviates  an  objection  which  might  other- 
wise be  brought  against  the  main  argument  of  this 
chapter.  To  the  theory  that  the  priest  of  Nemi  was 
slain  as  a  representative  of  the  spirit  of  the  grove,  it 
might  have  been  objected  that  such  a  custom  has  no 
analogy  in  classical  antiquity.  But  reasons  have 
now  been  given  for  believing  that  the  human  being 
periodically  and  occasionally  slain  by  the  Asiatic 
Greeks  was  regularly  treated  as  an  embodiment  of  a 
divinity.  Probably  the  persons  whom  the  Athenians 
kept  to  be  sacrificed  were  similarly  treated  as  divine. 
That  they  were  social  outcasts  did  not  matter.  On 
the  primitive  view  a  man  is  not  chosen  to  be  the 
mouth-piece  or  embodiment  of  a  god  on  account  of  his 
high  moral  qualities  or  social  standing.  The  divine 
afflatus  descends  equally  on  the  good  and  the  bad,  the 
lofty  and  the  lowly.  If  then  the  civilised  Greeks  of 
Asia  and  Athens  habitually  sacrificed  men  whom  they 
regarded  as  incarnate  gods,  there  can  be  no  inherent 
improbability  In  the  supposition  that  at  the  dawn  of 
history  a  similar  custom  was  observed  by  the  semi- 
barbarous  Latins  in  the  Arician  Grove. 


1  W.  Mannhardt,  5.  A',  p.  258-263.       pp.    251-303,  and    Myth.   Forsch.   pp. 
See  his  whole  discussion  of  such  customs,       1 1 3"  1 53- 


2i8  INCARNATE  GODS 


§  1 6. — Killing  the  god  in  Mexico 

But  the  religion  of  ancient  Mexico,  as  it  was  found 
and  described  by  the  Spanish  conquerors  in  the  six- 
teenth century,  offers  perhaps  the  closest  parallels  to 
the  rule  of  the  Arician  priesthood,  as  I  conceive  that 
rule  to  have  been  originally  observed.  Certainly 
nowhere  does  the  custom  of  killing  the  human  repre- 
sentative of  a  god  appear  to  have  been  carried  out 
so  systematically  and  on  so  extensive  a  scale  as  in 
Mexico.  "They  tooke  a  captive,"  says  Acosta, 
"  such  as  they  thought  good ;  and  afore  they  did 
sacrifice  him  unto  their  idolls,  they  gave  him  the 
name  of  the  idoll,  to  whom  hee  should  be  sacrificed, 
and  apparelled  him  with  the  same  ornaments  like 
their  idoll,  saying  that  he  did  represent  the  same  idoll. 
And  during  the  time  that  this  representation  lasted, 
which  was  for  a  yeere  in  some  feasts,  in  others  six 
moneths,  and  in  others  lesse,  they  reverenced  and 
worshipped  him  in  the  same  maner  as  the  proper 
idoll ;  and  in  the  meane  time  he  did  eate,  drincke,  and 
was  merry.  When  hee  went  through  the  streetes  the 
people  came  forth  to  worship  him,  and  every  one 
brought  him  an  almes,  with  children  and  sicke  folkes, 
that  he  might  cure  them,  and  bless  them,  suffering  him 
to  doe  all  things  at  his  pleasure,  onely  hee  was  accom- 
panied with  tenne  or  twelve  men  lest  he  should  flie. 
And  he  (to  the  end  he  might  be  reverenced  as  he 
passed)  sometimes  sounded  upon  a  small  flute,  that 
the  people  might  prepare  to  worship  him.  The  feast 
being  come,  and  hee  growne  fatte,  they  killed  him, 
opened  him,  and  eat  him,  making  a  solempne  sacrifice 


SLA  IN  IN  MEXICO  2 1 9 


of  him."'  For  example,  at  the  annual  festival  of  the 
great  god  Tezcatlipoca,  which  fell  about  Easter  or  a 
few  days  later,  a  young  man  was  chosen  to  be  the 
living  image  of  Tezcatlipoca  for  a  whole  year.  He 
had  to  be  of  unblemished  body,  and  he  was  carefully 
trained  to  sustain  his  lofty  role  with  becoming  grace 
and  dignity.  During  the  year  he  was  lapped  in  luxury, 
and  the  kincr  himself  took  care  that  the  future  victim 
was  apparelled  in  gorgeous  attire,  "for  already  he 
esteemed  him  as  a  god."  Attended  by  eight  pages 
clad  in  the  royal  livery,  the  young  man  roamed  the 
streets  of  the  capital  day  and  night  at  his  pleasure, 
carrying  flowers  and  playing  the  flute.  All  who 
saw  him  fell  on  their  knees  before  him  and  adored 
him,  and  he  graciously  acknowledged  their  homage. 
Twenty  days  before  the  festival  at  which  he  was 
to  be  sacrificed,  four  damsels,  delicately  nurtured, 
and  bearing  the  names  of  four  goddesses,  were  given 
him  to  be  his  brides.  For  five  days  before  the 
sacrifice  divine  honours  were  showered  on  him  more 
abundantly  than  ever.  The  king  remained  in  his 
palace,  while  the  whole  court  went  after  the  destined 
victim.  Everywhere  there  were  solemn  banquets 
and  balls.  On  the  last  day  the  young  man,  still 
attended  by  his  pages,  was  ferried  across  the  lake  in 
a  covered  barge  to  a  small  and  lonely  temple,  which, 
like  the  Mexican  temples  in  general,  rose  in  the  form 
of  a  pyramid.  As  he  ascended  the  stairs  of  the  temple 
he  broke  at  every  step  one  of  the  flutes  on  which  he 
had  played  in  the  days  of  his  glory.  On  reaching 
the  summit  he  was  seized  and  held  down  on  a  block  of 
stone,  while  a  priest  cut  open  his  breast  with  a  stone 
knife,  and  plucking  out  his  heart,  offered  it  to  the  sun. 

1  Acosta,  History  of  the  Indies,  ii.  323  (Hakluyt  Soc.  i 


IXCARXATE  GODS 


His  head  was  hung  among  the  skulls  of  previous 
victims,  and  his  legs  and  arms  were  cooked  and  pre- 
pared for  the  table  of  the  lords.  His  place  was 
immediately  filled  up  by  another  young  man,  who  for 
a  year  was  treated  with  the  same  profound  respect, 
and  at  the  end  of  it  shared  the  same  fate.^ 

The  idea  that  the  god  thus  slain  in  the  person  of 
his  representative  comes  to  life  again  immediately,  was 
graphically  represented  in  the  Mexican  ritual  by 
skinning  the  slain  man-god  and  clothing  in  his  skin  a 
living  man,  who  thus  became  the  new  representative 
of  the  godhead.  Thus  at  an  annual  festival  a  woman 
was  sacrificed  who  represented  Toci  or  the  ]\I other 
of  the  Gods.  She  was  dressed  with  the  ornaments, 
and  bore  the  name  of  the  goddess,  whose  living 
imap^e  she  was  believed  to  be.  After  being;'  feasted 
and  diverted  with  sham  fights  for  several  days,  she 
was  taken  at  midnight  to  the  summit  of  a  temple,  and 
beheaded  on  the  shoulders  of  a  man.  The  body  was 
immediately  flayed,  and  one  of  the  priests,  clothing 
himself  in  the  skin,  became  the  representative  of  the 
goddess  Toci.  The  skin  of  the  woman's  thigh  was 
removed  separately,  and  a  young  man  who  represented 
the  god  Cinteotl,  the  son  of  the  goddess  Toci,  wrapt 
it  round  his  face  like  a  mask.  \'arious  ceremonies 
then  followed,  in  which  the  two  men,  clad  in  the 
woman's  skin,  played  the  parts  respectively  of  the  god 
and  goddess.-      Again,   at  the  annual  festival  of  the 


1  Sahagun,  Histoire  des  choses  de  la  senting  deities  and  slain  in  that  char- 

Noicvelle   Espagm    (Paris,    1880),   pp.  acter,   see   Sahagun,  pp.   75,    116  sq., 

61    sq.,   96-99,    103;  Acosta,    History  123,   158  sq.,  164  sq.,  585  sqq.,  589; 

of  the  Indies,   ii.    350  sq.%  Clavigero,  Acosta,    ii.     384    sqq.;     Clavigero,    i. 

History  of  Mexico,  trans,  by  CuUen,  i.  312  ;   Bancroft,  li.  325  sqq.,  337  sq. 
300 ;    Bancroft,   Native   Races    of  the 

Pacific  States,   ii.    319  sq.      For  other  -  Sahagun,   pp.    18  sq.,  b%  sq.,  133- 

Mexican   instances    of    persons    repre-  139;  Bancroft,  iii.  353-359. 


SLAIN  IN  MEXICO 


god  Totec,  a  number  of  captives  having  been  killed 
and  skinned,  a  priest  clothed  himself  in  one  of  their 
skins,  and  thus  became  the  image  of  the  god  Totec. 
Then  wearing  the  ornaments  of  the  god — a  crown  of 
feathers,  golden  necklaces  and  ear-rings,  scarlet  shoes, 
etc. — he  was  enthroned,  and  received  offerings  of  the 
first  fruits  and  first  flowers  of  the  season,  together  with 
bunches  of  the  maize  which  had  been  kept  for  seed.^ 
Every  fourth  year  the  Ouauhtitlans  offered  sacrifices 
in  honour  of  the  god  of  fire.  On  the  eve  of  the 
festival  they  sacrificed  two  slaves,  skinned  them,  and 
took  out  their  thigh  bones.  Next  day  two  priests 
clothed  themselves  in  the  skins,  took  the  bones  in 
their  hands,  and  with  solemn  steps  and  dismal  howl- 
ings  descended  the  stairs  of  the  temple.  The  people, 
who  were  assembled  in  crowds  below,  called  out, 
"  Behold,  there  come  our  gods."  - 

Thus  it  appears  that  human  sacrifices  of  the  sort  I 
suppose  to  have  prevailed  at  Aricia  were,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  systematically  offered  on  a  large  scale  by  a 
people  whose  level  of  culture  was  probably  not 
inferior,  if  Indeed  it  was  not  distinctly  superior,  to  that 
occupied  by  the  Italian  races  at  the  early  period  to 
which  the  origin  of  the  Arician  priesthood  must  be 
referred.  The  positive  and  indubitable  evidence  of 
the  prevalence  of  such  sacrifices  in  one  part  of  the 
world  may  reasonably  be  allowed  to  strengthen  the 
probability  of  their  prevalence  in  places  for  which  the 
evidence  is  less  full  and  trustworthy.  Taken  all 
together,  the  evidence  affords  a  fair  presumption  that 
the   custom   of  killing   men   whom    their    worshippers 


1  Sahagun,   p.    584  sq.      For  this  festival  see  also  id.    pp.   37   sq.    58  sq.   60, 
87  sqq.  93  ;   Clavigero,  i.  297  ;  Baticroft,  ii.  306  sqq. 

2  Clavigero,  i.  283. 


KILLING  THE  GOD 


regard  as  divine  has  prevailed  in  many  parts  of  the 
world.  Whether  the  general  explanation  which  I 
have  offered  of  that  custom  is  adequate,  and  whether 
the  rule  that  the  priest  of  Aricia  had  to  die  a  violent 
death  is,  as  I  have  tried  to  show,  a  particular  instance 
of  the  general  custom,  are  questions  which  I  must  now 
leave  to  the  judgment  of  the  reader. 


CHAPTER   IV 

THE    GOLDEN  BOUGH 
"  Und  griin  des  Lebens  goldner  Baum." — Faust. 

§  I , — Between  heaven  and  earth 

At  the  outset  of  this  book  two  questions  were  proposed 
for  answer ;  Why  had  the  priest  of  Nemi  (Aricia)  to 
slay  his  predecessor  ?  And  why,  before  doing  so, 
had  he  to  pluck  the  Golden  Bough  ?  Of  these  two 
questions  the  first  has  now  been  answered.  The 
priest  of  Nemi,  if  I  am  right,  embodied  in  himself 
the  spirit,  primarily,  of  the  woods  and,  secondarily,  of 
vegetable  life  in  general.  Hence,  according  as  he 
was  well  or  ill,  the  woods,  the  flowers,  and  the  fields 
were  believed  to  flourish  or  fade  ;  and  if  he  were  to 
die  of  sickness  or  old  age,  the  plant  world,  it  was 
supposed,  would  simultaneously  perish.  Therefore 
it  was  necessary  that  this  priest  of  the  woodlands,  this 
sylvan  deity  incarnate  in  a  man,  should  be  put  to 
death  while  he  was  still  in  the  full  bloom  of  his 
divine  manhood,  in  order  that  his  sacred  life,  trans- 
mitted in  unabated  force  to  his  successor,  might  renew 
its  youth,  and  thus  by  successive  transmissions  through 
a  perpetual  line  of  vigorous  incarnations  might  remain 
eternally  fresh  and  young,  a  pledge  and  security  that 


224  ^'0T  TO  TOUCH  THE  GROUND  chap. 

the  buds  and  blossoms  of  spring,  the  verdure  of  sum- 
mer woods,  and  the  mellow  glories  of  autumn  would 
never  fail. 

But  we  have  still  to  ask.  What  was  the  Golden 
Bough  ?  and  why  had  each  candidate  for  the  Arician 
priesthood  to  pluck  it  before  he  could  slay  the  priest  ? 
These  questions  I  will  now  try  to  answer. 

It  will  be  well  to  begin  by  noticing  two  of  those 
rules  or  taboos  by  which,  as  we  have  seen,  the  life  of 
divine  kings  or  priests  is  regulated.  The  first  of  the 
rules  to  which  I  desire  to  call  the  reader's  attention  is 
that  the  divine  personage  may  not  touch  the  ground 
with  his  foot.  This  rule  was  observed  by  the  Mikado 
of  Japan  and  by  the  supreme  pontiff  of  the  Zapotecs 
in  Mexico.  The  latter  "profaned  his  sanctity  if  he  so 
much  as  touched  the  ground  with  his  foot."  ^  For  the 
Mikado  to  touch  the  ground  with  his  foot  was  a 
shameful  degradation  ;  indeed,  in  the  sixteenth  century, 
it  was  enough  to  deprive  him  of  his  office.  Outside 
his  palace  he  was  carried  on  men's  shoulders  ;  within 
it  he  walked  on  exquisitely  wrought  mats.^  The  king 
and  queen  of  Tahiti  might  not  touch  the  ground 
anywhere  but  within  their  hereditary  domains ;  for 
the  ground  on  which  they  trod  became  sacred.  In 
travelling  from  place  to  place  they  were  carried  on 
the  shoulders  of  sacred  men.  They  were  always 
accompanied  by  several  pairs  of  these  sacred  men  ;  and 
when  it  became  necessary  to  change  their  bearers,  the 
king  and  queen  vaulted  on  to  the  shoulders  of  their 
new    bearers    without    letting    their    feet    touch    the 

^  Bancroft,  Native  Races  of  the  Descriptio  regni Japoniae,  p.  1 1 ;  Caron, 
Pacific  States,  \i.  142.  "Account    of  Japan,"   in   Pinkerton's 

Voyages      and      Travels,     vii.      613  ; 

2  Memorials  of  Japan  (Hakluyt  Kaempfer,  "  History  of  Japan,"  in  ?V/.^ 
Society,  1850),  pp.  14,  141;  Varenius,      vii.  716. 


IV  NOT  TO  SEE  THE  SUN  225 

ground/  It  was  an  evil  omen  if  the  king  of  Dosuma 
touched  the  ground,  and  he  had  to  perform  an 
expiatory  ceremony.^  The  king  of  Persia  was  never 
seen  on  foot  outside  his  palace,^ 

The  second  rule  to  be  here  noted  is  that  the  sun  may 
not  shine  upon  the  divine  person.  This  rule  was  ob- 
served both  by  the  Mikado  and  by  the  pontiff  of  the 
Zapotecs.  The  latter  "was  looked  upon  as  a  god  whom 
the  earth  was  not  worthy  to  hold,  nor  the  sun  to  shine 
upon."  *  The  Japanese  would  not  allow  that  the  Mikado 
"  should  expose  his  sacred  person  to  the  open  air,  and 
the  sun  is  not  thought  worthy  to  shine  on  his  head."  ^ 
The  heir  to  the  throne  of  Bogota  in  Colombia,  South 
America,  had  to  undergo  a  severe  training  from  the 
age  of  sixteen  ;  he  lived  in  complete  retirement  in  a 
temple,  where  he  might  not  see  the  sun  nor  eat  salt 
nor  converse  with  a  woman. ^  The  heir  to  the  kingdom 
of  Sogamoso  in  Colombia,  before  succeeding  to  the 
crown,  had  to  fast  for  seven  years  in  the  temple,  being 
shut  up  in  the  dark  and  not  allowed  to  see  the  sun  or 
light.^  The  prince  who  was  to  become  Inca  of  Peru 
had  to  fast  for  a  month  without  seeing  light. ^ 

Now  it  is  remarkable  that  these  two  rules — not  to 
touch  the  ground  and  not  to  see  the  sun — are  observed 
either  separately  or  conjointly  by  girls  at   puberty  in 

1  Ellis,    Polynesian    Researches,    iii.       nimquam    illustrabatur :     in    apertum 
102    sq.    ed.     1836  ;    James     Wilson,       aerem  tion procedeliat." 

Missiojtary     Voyage    to    the  Southern           ^  Waitz,   Anthropologie    der  Natur- 

Pacific  Ocean,  p.  329.  v'dlker,  iv.  359. 

2  Bastian,      Der     Mensch  in      der          ''  Alonzo   de  Zurita,   "Rapport    sur 
Geschichte   iii    81  '^^  differentes    classes   de  chefs  de   la 

3  Athenaeus,  514  c.  Nouvelle-Espagne,"  p.  30   in  Ternaux- 

■^  Compans  s       Voyages,       Relations      et 

Bancroft,  I.e.  Metnoires     originaux     (Paris,      1840)  ; 

^  Kaempfer,  "  History  of  Japan,"  in  Waitz,  /.c;   Bastian,  Z?/«   Culturldnder 

Pinkerton's    Voyages  and  Ti-avels,   vii.  des  alien  Amerika,  ii.  204. 
717;     Caron,    "Account    of    Japan,"  ^  (Zxqzz.  A^  l^zow.  Second  Part  of  the 

id.  vii.  613  ;  Varenius,  Descriptio  regni  Chronicle  of  Peru  (Hakluyt  Soc.  1883), 

Japoniae,    p.    ir,    "  Radiis  soils  caput  p.   18. 

VOL.   II  Q 


226  GIRLS  SECLUDED  chap. 

many  parts  of  the  world.  Thus  amongst  the  negroes 
of  Loango  girls  at  puberty  are  confined  in  separate 
huts,  and  they  may  not  touch  the  ground  with  any 
part  of  their  bare  body.^  Amongst  the  Zulus  and 
kindred  tribes  of  South  Africa,  when  the  first  signs 
of  puberty  show  themselves  "  while  a  girl  is  walking, 
gathering  wood,  or  working  in  the  field,  she  runs  to 
the  river  and  hides  herself  amonof  the  reeds  for  the 
day  so  as  not  to  be  seen  by  men.  She  covers  her 
head  carefully  with  her  blanket  that  the  sun  may  not 
shine  on  it  and  shrivel  her  up  into  a  withered  skeleton, 
assured  result  from  exposure  to  the  sun's  beams. 
After  dark  she  returns  to  her  home  and  is  secluded  " 
in  a  hut  for  some  time.'^ 

In  New  Ireland  girls  are  confined  for  four  or  five 
years  in  small  cages,  being  kept  in  the  dark  and  not 
allowed  to  set  foot  on  the  ground.  The  custom  has 
been  thus  described  by  an  eye-witness.  "  I  heard 
from  a  teacher  about  some  strange  custom  connected 
with  some  of  the  young  girls  here,  so  I  asked  the 
chief  to  take  me  to  the  house  where  they  were.  The 
house  was  about  twenty-five  feet  in  length,  and  stood 
in  a  reed  and  bamboo  enclosure,  across  the  entrance 
to  which  a  bundle  of  dried  grass  was  suspended 
to  show  that  it  was  strictly  'tabu!  Inside  the  house 
were  three  conical  structures  about  seven  or  eieht 
feet  in  height,  and  about  ten  or  twelve  feet  in  cir- 
cumference at  the  bottom,  and  for  about  four  feet 
from  the  ground,  at  which  point  they  tapered  off  to  a 
point  at  the  top.  These  cages  were  made  of  the 
broad  leaves  of  the  pandanus-tree,  sewn  quite  close 

1  Pechuel-Loesche,  "  Indiscretes  aus  2  Rev.  James  Macdonald  (Reay  Free 

'Lozin^o,"  Zeilschnft  fiir  Elknologie,  x.  Manse,  Caithness),  Manners,  Customs, 
(1S78)  23.  Superstitions,    and  Religions  of  Soiii/i 

African  Tribes  (in  manuscript). 


AT  PUBERTY  227 


together  so  that  no  light,  and  Httle  or  no  air  could 
enter.  On  one  side  of  each  is  an  opening  which  is 
closed  by  a  double  door  of  plaited  cocoa-nut  tree  and 
pandanus-tree  leaves.  About  three  feet  from  the 
ground  there  is  a  stage  of  bamboos  which  forms  the 
floor.  In  each  of  these  cages  we  were  told  there  was 
a  young  woman  confined,  each  of  whom  had  to 
remain  for  at  least  four  or  five  years,  without  ever 
being  allowed  to  go  outside  the  house.  I  could 
scarcely  credit  the  story  when  I  heard  it ;  the  whole 
thing  seemed  too  horrible  to  be  true.  I  spoke  to  the 
chief,  and  told  him  that  I  wished  to  see  the  inside  of 
the  cages,  and  also  to  see  the  girls  that  I  might  make 
them  a  present  of  a  few  beads.  He  told  me  that  it  was 
'  tabit,'  forbidden  for  any  men  but  their  own  relations 
to  look  at  them  ;  but  I  suppose  the  promised  beads 
acted  as  an  inducement,  and  so  he  sent  away  for  some 
old  lady  who  had  charge,  and  who  alone  is  allowed  to 
open  the  doors.  .  .  .  She  had  to  undo  the  door  when 
the  chief  told  her  to  do  so,  and  then  the  girls  peeped 
out  at  us,  and,  when  told  to  do  so,  they  held  out  their 
hands  for  the  beads.  I,  however,  purposely  sat  at  some 
distance  away  and  merely  held  out  the  beads  to  them, 
as  I  wished  to  draw  them  quite  outside,  that  I  might 
inspect  the  inside  of  the  cages.  This  desire  of  mine 
gave  rise  to  another  difficulty,  as  these  girls  were  not 
allowed  to  put  their  feet  to  the  ground  all  the  time 
they  were  confined  in  these  places.  However,  they 
wished  to  get  the  beads,  and  so  the  old  lady  had  to  go 
outside  and  collect  a  lot  of  pieces  of  wood  and  bamboo, 
which  she  placed  on  the  ground,  and  then  going  to  one 
of  the  girls,  she  helped  her  down  and  held  her  hand  as 
she  stepped  from  one  piece  of  wood  to  another  until 
she  came  near  enough  to  get  the  beads  I  held  out  to 


GIRLS  SECLUDED 


her.  I  then  went  to  inspect  the  inside  of  the  cage  out 
of  which  she  had  come,  but  could  scarcely  put  my  head 
inside  of  it,  the  atmosphere  was  so  hot  and  stifling. 
It  was  clean  and  contained  nothing  but  a  few  short 
lengths  of  bamboo  for  holding  water.  There  was 
only  room  for  the  girl  to  sit  or  lie  down  in  a 
crouched  position  on  the  bamboo  platform,  and  when 
the  doors  are  shut  it  must  be  nearly  or  quite  dark 
inside.  The  girls  are  never  allowed  to  come  out  except 
once  a  day  to  bathe  in  a  dish  or  wooden  bowl  placed 
close  to  each  cage.  They  say  that  they  perspire 
profusely.  They  are  placed  in  these  stifling  cages 
when  quite  young,  and  must  remain  there  until  they 
are  young  women,  when  they  are  taken  out  and  have 
each  a  great  marriage  feast  provided  for  them."  ^ 

In  some  parts  of  New  Guinea  "  daughters  of  chiefs, 
when  they  are  about  twelve  or  thirteen  years  of  age, 
are  kept  indoors  for  two  or  three  years,  never  being 
allowed,  under  any  pretence,  to  descend  from  the 
house,  and  the  house  is  so  shaded  that  the  sun  cannot 


1  The   Rev.    G.    Brown,   quoted   by  idle.      This    distinction    is    sometimes 

the  Rev.  B.  Danks,  "Marriage  Customs  expressly  stated;    for  example,   among 

of    the    New    Britain    Group,"  Journ.  the  Goajiras  of  Colombia  rich  people 

Anthrop.    Institute,  xviii.    284  sq. ;  cp.  keep     their    daughters     shut     up     in 

Rev.  G.  Brown,  "Notes  on  the  Duke  separate    huts   at    puberty  for    periods 

of  York  Group,  New  Britain,  and  New  varying    from   one    to   four   years,    but 

Ireland,"   Joitni.     Royal    Geogr.     Soc.  poor  people  cannot  afford  to  do  so  for 

xlvii.      (1877)     p.     142     sq.     Powell's  more   than   a   fortnight    or    a    month, 

description    of   the    New   Ireland   cus-  F.  A.  Simons,  "  An  exploration  of  the 

iovci  vs,  •ivix\\\'ax  {Wanderings  in  a    Wild  Goajira     Peninsula,"     Proceed.     Royal 

Country,  p.    249).      According  to  him  Geogr.   Soc.    N.  S.    vii.    (1885)    p.    791. 

the  girls  wear  wreaths  of  scented  herbs  In  Fiji,  brides  who  were  being  tattooed 

round    the    waist    and    neck ;    an    old  were    kept    from    the   sun.      Williams, 

woman   or   a   little  child    occupies    the  Fiji  and  the  Fijians,   i.    170.       This 

lower  floor  of  the  cage  :  and  the  con-  was    perhaps    a    modification     of    the 

finement  lasts  only  a  month.      Probably  Melanesian    custom    of  secluding   girls 

the    long    period    mentioned    by    Mr.  at    puberty.       The    reason    mentioned 

Brown    is    that    prescribed    for    chiefs'  by   Mr.    Williams,    "to    improve    her 

daughters.       Poor    people    could     not  complexion,"  can  hardly  have  been  the 

afford   to   keep  their  children  so  long  original  one. 


AT  PUBERTY  229 


shine  on  them."^  Among  the  Ot  Danoms  of  Borneo 
girls  at  the  age  of  eight  or  ten  years  are  shut  up  in  a 
Httle  room  or  cell  of  the  house  and  cut  off  from  all 
intercourse  with  the  world  for  a  long  time.  The  cell, 
like  the  rest  of  the  house,  is  raised  on  piles  above  the 
ground,  and  is  lit  by  a  single  small  window  opening  on 
a  lonely  place,  so  that  the  girl  is  in  almost  total  dark- 
ness. She  may  not  leave  the  room  on  any  pretext 
whatever,  not  even  for  the  most  necessary  purposes. 
None  of  her  family  may  see  her  all  the  time  she  is  shut 
up,  but  a  single  slave  woman  is  appointed  to  wait  on 
her.  During  her  lonely  confinement,  which  often  lasts 
seven  years,  the  girl  occupies  herself  in  weaving  mats 
or  with  other  handiwork.  Her  bodily  growth  is 
stunted  by  the  long  want  of  exercise,  and  when,  on 
attaining  womanhood,  she  is  brought  out,  her  com- 
plexion is  pale  and  wax-like.  She  is  now  shown  the 
sun,  the  earth,  the  water,  the  trees,  and  the  flowers,  as 
if  she  were  newly  born.  Then  a  great  feast  is  made, 
a  slave  is  killed,  and  the  girl  is  smeared  with  his 
blood.2  In  Ceram  girls  at  puberty  were  formerly  shut 
up  by  themselves  in  a  hut  which  was  kept  dark.^ 

Amongst  the  Aht  Indians  of  Vancouver  Island, 
when  girls  reach  puberty  they  are  placed  in  a  sort 
of  gallery  in  the  house  "and  are  there  surrounded 
completely  with  mats,  so  that  neither  the  sun  nor  any 
fire  can  be  seen.  In  this  cage  they  remain  for  several 
days.  Water  is  given  them,  but  no  food.  The 
longer  a   girl  remains   in   this  retirement  the  greater 


1  Chalmers    and    Gill,     Work    and  632  sq. ;  Otto  Finsch,  Neu  Gidnea  nnd 
Adventure  in  Nezu  Gtnnea,  p.   159.  sei7ie  Bewohner,  p.  1 16. 

2  Schwaner,     Borneo,     Beschrijving 

van  het  stroomgebied  van   den  Barito,  ^  Riedel,    De    shtik-en     kroesharige 

etc.  ii.  77  sq.;  Zimmerman,  Die  Inseln  rassen    tiisschen   Selebes    en   Papua,    p. 

des   Indischen   und  Stillen   Meeres,    ii.  138. 


GIRLS  SECLUDED 


honour  is  it  to  the  parents  ;  but  she  is  disgraced  for 
life  if  it  is  known  that  she  has  seen  fire  or  the  sun 
during  this  initiatory  ordeal."^  Amongst  the  Thhnkeet 
or  Kolosh  Indians  of  Alaska,  when  a  girl  shows 
signs  of  womanhood  she  is  shut  up  in  a  little  hut 
or  cage,  which  is  completely  blocked  up  with  the 
exception  of  a  small  air-hole.  In  this  dark  and 
filthy  abode  she  had  formerly  to  remain  a  year, 
without  fire,  exercise,  or  associates.  Her  food  was  put 
in  at  the  small  window  ;  she  had  to  drink  out  of  the 
wing-bone  of  a  white-headed  eagle.  The  time  has 
now  been  reduced,  at  least  in  some  places,  to  six 
months.  The  girl  has  to  wear  a  sort  of  hat  with 
long  flaps,  that  her  gaze  may  not  pollute  the  sky  ; 
for  she  is  thought  unfit  for  the  sun  to  shine  upon,^ 
Amongst  the  Koniags,  an  Esquimaux  people  of 
Alaska,  girls  at  puberty  were  placed  in  small  huts 
in  which  they  had  to  remain  on  their  hands  and 
knees  for  six  months ;  then  the  hut  was  enlarged 
enough  to  let  them  kneel  upright,  and  they  had 
to  remain  in  this  posture  for  six  months  more.^ 

When  symptoms  of  puberty  appeared  on  a  girl  for 
the    first   time,    the    Indians    of   the   Rio   de  la   Plata 


1  Sproat,  Scenes  and  Studies  of  of  American  Folk-lore,  i.  169.  For 
Savage  Life,  p.  93  sq.  caps,  hoods,  and   veils  worn  by  girls  at 

2  Erman,  "  Ethnographische  Wahr-  such  seasons,  compare  G.  H.  Loskiel, 
nehmungen  u.  Erfahrungen  an  den  History  of  the  Mission  of  the  United 
Kiisten  des  Barings- Mee res,"  Zeitschrift  Brethren   among  the   Indians,    i.    56  ; 

f  Ethnologie,  ii.    318  sq.  ;  Langsdorff,  Journal  Anthrop.    Institute,    vii.    206  ; 

Heise  tim  die  IVelt,  ii.  11^  sq.;   Holm-  G.    M.    Dawson,    Repoi-t  of  the   Queen 

berg,     "  Ethnogr.     Skizzen     iiber    die  Charlotte     Islands,     1878     (Geological 

Volker  d.   russischen   Amerika,"  Acta  Survey  of  Canada),  p.  130  B;  Petitot, 

Societatis    Scientiarum    Fennicae,     iv.  Monographic    des    Denc-Dindjie,    pp. 

( 1 856)  p.  3205^. ;  Vi'ssizxoli,  Native  Races  72,  75;    id.,    Ti-aditions  indiennes  du 

of  the  Pacific  States,  i.  wo  sq.;  Krause,  Canada  Nord-Ouest,  p.  258. 
Die  Tlinkit-Indianer,  p.  2 1 7  sq.  ;    Rev. 

Slieldon  Jackson,  "Alaska  and  its  ^  Holmberg,  op.  cit.  p.  401;  Ban- 
Inhabitants,"  American  Antiquarian,  croft,  i.  82  ;  Petroff,  Report  on  the 
ii.   Ill  sq.)    W.    M.    Grant,  m  Journal  Population,  etc.  af  Alaska,  p.   143. 


AT  PUBERTY  231 


used  to  sew   her  up  in  her  hammock  as  if  she  were 
dead,  leaving  only  a  small  hole  for  her  mouth  to  allow 
her  to  breathe.      In  this  state  she  continued  so  long 
as    the    symptoms    lasted.^      In    similar   circumstances 
the    Chiriguanos    of   Bolivia    hoisted   the   girl   in    her 
hammock  to  the  roof,  where  she  stayed  for  a  month  ; 
the  second  month  the  hammock  was  let  halfway  down 
from   the   roof;    and   in  the  third  month  old  women, 
armed    with    sticks,    entered    the   hut    and   ran    about 
striking     everything    they    met,     saying     they    were 
hunting  the  snake  that  had  wounded  the  girl.      This 
they   did    till   one   of   the    women  gave   out   that   she 
had  killed  the  snake."     Amongst  some  of  the  Brazilian 
Indians,  when  a  girl  attained  to  puberty,  her  hair  was 
burned   or  shaved   off  close  to  the   head.     Then  she 
was  placed  on  a  flat  stone  and  cut  with  the  tooth  of 
an  animal  from  the  shoulders  all  down  the  back,  till 
she  ran  with  blood.      Then  the  ashes  of  a  wild  gourd 
were    rubbed   into   the  wounds ;    the   girl   was    bound 
hand    and    foot,    and    hung    in    a    hammock,    being 
enveloped  in  it  so  closely  that  no  one  could  see  her. 
Here  she  had   to  stay  for  three  days  without  eating 
or   drinking.     When    the  three  days  were  over,  she 
stepped  out  of  the  hammock  upon  the  flat  stone,  for 
her  feet  might  not  touch  the  ground.      If  she  had  a 
call  of  nature,  a  female  relation  took  the  girl  on   her 
back  and  carried  her  out,  taking  with  her  a  live  coal 
to  prevent  evil  influences  from  entering  the  girl's  body. 
Being  replaced  in  her  hammock  she  was  now  allowed 
to  get  some  flour,  boiled  roots,  and  water,  but  might 
not  taste  salt  or  flesh.     Thus  she  continued  to  the  end 


1  Lafitau,      Mocurs     des      Saiivages      333.       On    the    Chiriguanos    see    Von 
ameriquains,  i.  262  sq.  Martius,   Zur  Ethnographic  Amerika's 

2  Lettres  edifimites  et  atrieitses,  viii.      sumal  Brasiliem,  p.  2 1 2  sqq. 


232  GIRLS  SECLUDED 


of  the  first  monthly  period,  at  the  expiry  of  which  she 
was  gashed  on  the  breast  and  belly  as  well  as  all  down 
the  back.  During  the  second  month  she  still  stayed 
in  her  hammock,  but  her  rule  of  abstinence  was  less 
rigid,  and  she  was  allowed  to  spin.  The  third  month 
she  was  blackened  with  a  certain  pigment  and  began 
to  go  about  as  usual. ^ 

Amongst  the  Macusis  of  British  Guiana,  when 
a  girl  shows  the  first  signs  of  puberty,  she  is  hung 
in  a  hammock  at  the  highest  point  of  the  hut.  For 
the  first  few  days  she  may  not  leave  the  hammock 
by  day,  but  at  night  she  must  come  down,  light  a 
fire,  and  spend  the  night  beside  it,  else  she  would 
break  out  in  sores  on  her  neck,  throat,  etc.  So 
long  as  the  symptoms  are  at  their  height,  she  must 
fast  rigorously.  When  they  have  abated,  she  may 
come  down  and  take  up  her  abode  in  a  little  com- 
partment that  is  made  for  her  in  the  darkest  corner 
of  the  hut.  In  the  morning  she  may  cook  her  food, 
but  it  must  be  at  a  separate  fire  and  in  a  vessel  of 
her  own.  In  about  ten  days  the  magician  comes 
and  undoes  the  spell  by  muttering  charms  and  breath- 
ing on  her  and  on  the  more  valuable  of  the  things  with 
which  she  has  come  in  contact.  The  pots  and  drinking 
vessels  which  she  used  are  broken  and  the  fragments 
buried.  After  her  first  bath,  the  girl  must  submit  to 
be  beaten  by  her  mother  with  thin  rods  without 
uttering  a  cry.  At  the  end  of  the  second  period  she 
is  again  beaten,  but  not  afterwards.  She  is  now 
''clean,"  and  can  mix  again  with  people.^  Other 
Indians    of    Guiana,    after    keeping    the    girl    in    her 

1  Thevet,    Cosmographie   Universelk  ^  Schomburgk,    Reisen    in    Britisch 

(Paris,    1575)   ii.    946  B   sq.  ;    Lafitau,       Guiana,    ii.     315    sq.;    Martins,     Ztir 
op.  cit.  i.  290  sqq.  Ethnogi'aphie  Amerika's,  p.  644. 


AT  PUBERTY 


233 


hammock  at  the  top  of  the  hut  for  a  month,  expose 
her  to  certain  large  ants,  whose  bite  is  very  painful.^ 
The  custom  of  stinging  the  girl  with  ants  or  beating 
her  with  rods  is  intended,  we  may  be  sure,  not  as  a 
punishment  or  a  test  of  endurance,  but  as  a  purifica- 
tion, the  object  being  to  drive  away  the  malignant 
influences  with  which  a  girl  at  such  times  is  believed 
to  be  beset  and  enveloped.  Examples  of  purification, 
both  by  beating  and  by  stinging  with  ants,  have 
already  come  before  us.^  Probably,  beating  or  scourg- 
ing as  a  religious  or  ceremonial  rite  always  originated 
with  a  similar  intention.  It  was  meant  to  wipe  off 
and  drive  away  a  dangerous  contagion  (whether 
personified  as  demoniacal  or  not)  which  was  sup- 
posed to  be  adhering  physically,  though  invisibly, 
to   the   body  of  the  sufferer.^     The  pain  inflicted  on 


1  Labat,  Voyage  du  Chevalier  des 
Marchais  en  Guince,  Isles  voisines,  et  a 
Cayenne,  iv.  p.  365  sq.  (Paris  ed.),  p.  17 
sq.  (Amsterdam  ed.) 

2  Above,  p.  2 1 3  j^. ,  vol.  i.  p.  1 5  3  sq. 

3  This  interpretation  of  the  custom 
is  supported  by  the  fact  that  beating 
or  scourging  is  inflicted  on  inanimate 
objects  expressly  for  the  purpose  in- 
dicated in  the  text.  Thus  the  Indians 
of  Costa  Rica  hold  that  there  are  two 
kinds  of  ceremonial  uncleanness,  7iya 
and  bu-ku-rjl.  Anything  that  has  been 
connected  with  a  death  is  nya.  But 
Im-kii-ru  is  much  more  virulent.  It 
can  not  only  make  one  sick  but  kill. 
"The  worst  bu-ku-ri'c  of  all  is  that  of 
a  young  woman  in  her  first  pregnancy. 
She  infects  the  whole  neighbourhood. 
Persons  going  from  the  house  where 
she  lives  carry  the  infection  with  them 
to  a  distance,  and  all  the  deaths  or 
other  serious  misfortunes  in  the  vicinity 
are  laid  to  her  charge.  In  the  old 
times,  when  the  savage  laws  and  customs 
were  in  full  force,  it  was  not  an  un- 
common thing  for  the  husband  of  such 
a  woman  to  pay  damages  for  casualities 


thus  caused  by  his  unfortunate  wife.  .  .  . 
Bu  -  kti  -  rii  emanates  in  a  variety  of 
ways ;  arms,  utensils,  even  houses 
become  affected  by  it  after  long  disuse, 
and  before  they  can  be  used  again 
must  be  purified.  In  the  case  of 
portable  objects  left  undisturbed  for  a 
long  time,  the  custom  is  to  beat  them 
with  a  stick  before  touching  them.  I 
have  seen  a  woman  take  a  long  walking 
stick  and  beat  a  basket  hanging  from 
the  roof  of  a  house  by  a  cord.  On 
asking  what  that  was  for,  I  was  told 
that  the  basket  contained  her  treasures, 
that  she  would  probably  want  to  take 
something  out  the  next  day,  and  that  she 
was  driving  off  the  bn-kn-rii.  A  house 
long  unused  must  be  swept,  and  then 
the  person  who  is  purifying  it  must 
take  a  stick  and  beat  not  only  the 
movable  objects,  but  the  beds,  posts, 
and  in  short  every  accessible  part  of 
the  interior.  The  next  day  it  is  fit  for 
occupation.  A  place  not  visited  for  a 
long  time  or  reached  for  the  first  time 
is  bu-ku-rii.  On  our  return  from  the 
ascent  of  Pico  Blanco,  nearly  all  the 
party    suffered    from    little    calenturas, 


234  GIRLS  SECLUDED 


the  person  beaten  was  no  more  the  object  of  the 
beating  than  it  is  of  a  surgical  operation  with  us  ;  it 
was  a  necessary  accident,  that  was  all.  In  later  times 
such  customs  were  interpreted  otherwise,  and  the  pain, 
from  being  an  accident,  became  the  prime  object  of 
the  ceremony,  which  was  now  regarded  either  as  a  test 
of  endurance  imposed  upon  persons  at  critical  epochs 
of  life,  or  as  a  mortification  of  the  flesh  well  pleasing 
to  the  god.  But  asceticism,  under  any  shape  or  form, 
is  never  primitive.  Amongst  the  Uaupes  of  Brazil 
a  girl  at  puberty  is  secluded  in  the  house  for  a  month, 
and  allowed  only  a  small  quantity  of  bread  and  water. 
Then  she  is  taken  out  into  the  midst  of  her  relations 
and  friends,  each  of  whom  gives  her  four  or  five  blows 
with  pieces  of  sipo  (an  elastic  climber),  till  she  falls 
senseless  or  dead.  If  she  recovers,  the  operation  is 
repeated  four  times  at  intervals  of  six  hours,  and  it 
is  considered  an  offence  to  the  parents  not  to  strike 
hard.  Meantime,  pots  of  meats  and  fish  have  been 
made  ready  ;  the  sipos  are  dipped  into  them  and  then 
given  to  the  girl  to  lick,  who  is  now  considered  a 
marriageable  woman. ^ 

When  a  Hindoo  maiden  reaches  maturity  she  is 
kept  in  a  dark  room  for  four  days,  and  is  forbidden  to 
see  the  sun.     She  is  regarded  as  unclean  ;  no  one  is 


the  result  of  extraordinary  exposure  to  object,    and    resents    being    disturbed  ; 

wet  and  cold  and  want  of  food.     The  but   I   have   never  been  able  to  learn 

Indians  said  that  the  peak  was  especi-  from  the  Indians  that  they  consider  it 

ally  bti-ku-rii,   since   nobody  had  ever  so.       They   seem    to   think   of  it    as   a 

been  on  it  before."     One  day  Mr.  Gabb  property    the    objects    acquires."     W. 

took  down  some  dusty  blow-guns  amid  M.     Gabb,    Indian    Tribes    and  Lan- 

cries  of  bu  -  kit  -  rii   from   the  Indians.  guagcs  of  Costa  Rica  (read  before  the 

Some  weeks  afterwards  a  boy  died,  and  American    Philosophical   Society,    20th 

the    Indians    firmly    believed    that    the  August  1875),  p.  504  sq. 
bit-kii-ni  of  the  blow-guns  had   killed 

him.       "  P'rom    all     the    foregoing,    it  1  A.     R.     Wallace,     Narrative     of 

would  seem   that  btc-kji-ni  is  a  sort  of  Travels  on  the  Amazon  and  Rio  Negro, 

evil  spirit  that  takes  possession  of  the  p.  496. 


AT  PUBERTY  235 


allowed  to  touch  her.      Her  diet  is  restricted  to  boiled 
rice,    milk,    sugar,   curd,    and    tamarind    without    salt.^ 
In   Cambodia   a  girl  at  puberty  is  put  to  bed  under 
a  mosquito  curtain,  where  she  should  stay  a  hundred 
days.       Usually,   however,   four,  five,   ten,   or   twenty 
days    are  thought  enough  ;    and  even  this,   in  a  hot 
climate  and  under  the  close  meshes  of  the  curtain,  is 
sufficiently  trying.-     According  to  another  account,  a 
Cambodian  maiden  at  puberty  is  said  to  "enter  into 
the  shade."     During  her  retirement,  which,  according 
to  the  rank  and  position  of  her  family,  may  last  any 
time   from   a  few   days   to   several   years,   she   has   to 
observe  a  number  of  rules,  such  as  not  to  be  seen  by 
a  strange  man,  not   to   eat   flesh   or  fish,   and   so  on. 
She   goes    nowhere,  not   even  to   the  pagoda.       But 
this  state  of  retirement  is  discontinued  during  eclipses  ; 
at  such  times  she  goes  forth  and  pays  her  devotions  to 
the  monster    who   is   supposed   to    cause    eclipses    by 
catching  the  heavenly  bodies  between  his  teeth.=^     The 
fact    that    her    retirement    is   discontinued    during    an 
eclipse  seems  to  show  how  literally  the  injunction  is 
interpreted     which      forbids     maidens     entering     on 
womanhood  to  look  upon  the  sun. 

A  superstition  so  widely  diffused  as  this  might  be 
expected  to  leave  traces  in  legends  and  folk -tales. 
And  it   has  done  so.      In   a   modern   Greek  folk -tale 

1  Bose,  The  Hindoos  as  they  arc,  t^.  "  Schetsen     van     het     eiland     Bali," 

86.      Similarly,    after  a   Brahman   boy  Tijdschrift    voor    Nederlandsch    Indie, 

has    been    invested    with    the    sacred  N.  S.  ix.  {1880)  428  j-^. 
thread,    he    is    for    three    days   strictly  o  ^j^^^^^  Royaitme  du   Cambodge,  i. 

forbidden  to  see  the  sun.      He  may  not  ^ 

eat   salt,  and   he   is  enjoined  to  sleep  ^ 

either   on   a   carpet   or   a   deer's  skin,  ^  Aymonier,  "Notes surles coutumes 

without  a  mattress  or  mosquito  curtain.  et   croyances  superstitieuses  des   Cam- 

Ib.  p.    186.      In   Bali,   boys  who  have  bodgiens,"  Cochinchine  Francaise,  Ex- 

had   their  teeth  filed,  as  a  preliminary  cursions   et    Reconnaissances,     No.     16 

to  marriage,  are  kept  shut  up  in  a  dark  (Saigon,    1883),  p.    193   sq.       Cp.    id. 

room    for    three     days.        Van    Eck,  Notice  sur  le  Catnbodge,  p.  50. 


236  NOT  TO  SEE  THE  SUN  chap. 

the  Fates  predict  that  in  her  fifteenth  year  a  princess 
must  be  careful  not  to  let  the  sun  shine  on  her,  for  if 
this  were  to  happen  she  would  be  turned  into  a  lizard.^ 
A  Tyrolese  story  tells  how  it  was  the  doom  of  a  lovely 
maiden  to  be  transported  into  the  belly  of  a  whale  if 
ever  a  sunbeam  fell  on  her.^  In  another  modern 
Greek  tale  the  Sun  bestows  a  daughter  upon  a 
childless  woman  on  condition  of  taking  the  child 
back  to  himself  when  she  is  twelve  years  old.  So, 
when  the  child  was  twelve,  the  mother  closed  the 
doors  and  windows,  and  stopped  up  all  the  chinks 
and  crannies,  to  prevent  the  Sun  from  coming  to 
fetch  away  her  daughter.  But  she  forgot  to  stop 
up  the  key -hole,  and  a  sunbeam  streamed  through 
it  and  carried  off  the  girl.^  In  a  Sicilian  story  a  seer 
foretells  that  a  king  will  have  a  daughter  who,  in  her 
fourteenth  year,  will  conceive  a  child  by  the  Sun.  So, 
when  the  child  was  born,  the  king  shut  her  up  in  a 
lonely  tower  which  had  no  window,  lest  a  sunbeam 
should  fall  on  her.  When  she  was  nearly  fourteen 
years  old,  it  happened  that  her  parents  sent  her  a 
piece  of  roasted  kid,  in  which  she  found  a  sharp  bone. 
With  this  bone  she  scraped  a  hole  in  the  wall,  and  a 
sunbeam  shot  through  the  hole  and  impregnated  her.* 

^  B.  Schmidt,  Griechische  Mdrchen,  princess  have  no  bones  with  her  meat. 

Sagemind  Volkslieder,  p.  98.  Hahn,  op.   cit.    No.    15;  Gonzenbach, 

2  Schneller,  Mdrchen  und  Sagen  aus  Nos.    26,    27;  Pentamerone,    No.    23. 

Wdhchtirol,  No.  22.  From   this  we  should  infer  that  it  is  a 

^  J.    G.  von  Hahn,   Griechische  und  rule   with   savages    not    to   let   women 

albanesische  Mdrchen,  'iio.  i^l.  handle    the    bones    of   animals    during 

*  Gonzenbach,  Sici/i(7nischeA/dn-hen,  their  monthly  seclusions.      We  have  al- 

No.    28.       The  incident  of  the    bone  ready  seen  the  great  respect  with  which 

occurs   in   other  folk -tales.     A  prince  the  savage  treats   the   bones  of  game 

or   princess  is  shut   up  for  safety  in  a  (see  above,  p.    116  si/(/.)  ;  and   women 

tower  and  makes  his  or  her  escape  by  in  their  courses  are  specially  forbidden 

scraping  a  hole  in  the  wall  with  a  bone  to  meddle  with  the  hunter  or  tisher,  as 

which  has  been  accidentally  conveyed  their  contact  or  neighbourhood  would 

into  the  tower  ;  sometimes  it  is  expressly  spoil  his  sport  (see  below,  p.  238  sq(/.) 

said    that   care   was    taken    to    let   the  In  folk-tales  the  hero  who  uses  the  bone 


IV  NOT  TO  SEE  THE  SUN  237 

The  old  Greek  story  of  Danae,  who  was  confined  by 
her  father  in  a  subterranean  chamber  or  a  brazen 
tower,  but  impregnated  by  Zeus,  who  reached  her 
in  the  shape  of  a  shower  of  gold,  perhaps  belongs 
to  the  same  class  of  tales.  It  has  its  counterpart  in 
the  legend  which  the  Kirgis  of  Siberia  tell  of  their 
ancestry.  A  certain  Khan  had  a  fair  daughter,  whom 
he  kept  in  a  dark  iron  house,  that  no  man  might  see 
her.  An  old  woman  tended  her  ;  and  when  the  girl 
was  grown  to  maidenhood  she  asked  the  old  woman, 
"  Where  do  you  go  so  often  ?  " — "  My  child,"  said  the 
old  dame,  "there  is  a  bright  world.  In  that  bright 
world  your  father  and  mother  live,  and  all  sorts  of 
people  live  there.  That  is  where  I  go."  The  maiden 
said,  "  Good  mother,  I  will  tell  nobody,  but  show  me 
that  bright  world."  So  the  old  woman  took  the  girl 
out  of  the  iron  house.  But  when  she  saw  the  bright 
world,  the  girl  tottered  and  fainted  ;  and  the  eye  of 
God  fell  upon  her,  and  she  conceived.  Her  angry 
father  put  her  in  a  golden  chest  and  sent  her  floating 
away  (fairy  gold  can  float  in  fairyland)  over  the  wide 
sea.^  The  shower  of  gold  in  the  Greek  story,  and  the 
eye  of  God  in  the  Kirgis  legend,  probably  stand  for 
sunlight  and  the  sun.  The  idea  that  women  may  be 
impregnated  by  the  sun  is  not  uncommon  in  legends,^ 
and  there  are  even  traces  of  it  in  marriage  customs.^ 

is   sometimes  a  boy  ;  but  the  incident  circumstances  used  to  drink  out  of  the 

might  easily  be  transferred  from  a  girl  wing -bone    of    a   white-headed    eagle 

to  a  boy  after  its  real  meaning  had  been  (Langsdorff,    Jieise    urn    die    Welt,    ii. 

forgotten.      Amongst    the    Hare  -  skin  114). 

Indians  a  girl  at  puberty  is  forbidden  ^  W.    Radloff,    Proben    der     Volks- 

to  break   the  bones  of  hares.      Petitot,  litterattir  der  tiirkischett  Stdmme  Siid- 

Tt-aditions  indiennes  du  Canada  Nord-  Sibiriens,  iii.  82  sq. 

ouest,  p.  258.      On  the  other  hand,  she  ^  Bastian,    Die    Volker  des  dstlichen 

drinks  out  of  a  tube  made  of  a  swan's  Asien,  1.  416,  vi.  25  ;  Turner,  Sai?ioa, 

bone  (Petitot,  I.e.  and  id.,  Monographie  p.    200  ;    Faiijab    Notes   and   Queries, 

des  Dene-Dindjie,  p.  76),  and  we  have  ii.  No.  797. 

seen  that  a  Thlinkeet  girl  in  the  same  ^  Amongst    the    Chaco    Indians    of 


238  WOMEN  SECLUDED  chap. 

The  ground  of  this  seclusion  of  girls  at  puberty  lies 
in  the  deeply  engrained  dread  which  primitive  man 
universally  entertains  of  menstruous  blood.  Evidence 
of  this  has  already  been  adduced,^  but  a  few  more  facts 
may  here  be  added.  Amongst  the  Australian  blacks 
"  the  boys  are  told  from  their  infancy  that,  if  they  see 
the  blood,  they  will  early  become  gray -headed,  and 
their  strength  will  fail  prematurely."  Hence  a  woman 
lives  apart  at  these  times  ;  and  if  a  young  man  or  boy 
approaches  her  she  calls  out,  and  he  immediately 
makes  a  circuit  to  avoid  her.  The  men  go  out  of 
their  way  to  avoid  even  crossing  the  tracks  made 
by  women  at  such  times.  Similarly  the  woman  may 
not  walk  on  any  path  frequented  by  men,  nor  touch 
anything  used  by  men  ;  she  may  not  eat  fish,  or  go 
near  water  at  all,  much  less  cross  it  ;  for  if  she  did,  the 
fish  would  be  frightened,  and  the  fishers  would  have 
no  luck  ;  she  may  not  even  fetch  water  for  the  camp  ; 
it  is  sufficient  for  her  to  say  Thajjia  to  ensure  her 
husband  fetching  the  water  himself.  A  severe  beat- 
ing, or  even  death,  is  the  punishment  inflicted  on  an 
Australian  woman  who  breaks  these  rules.^  The 
Bushmen    think    that,    by    a    glance   of    a    girl's    eye 

South  America  a  newly-married  couple  morning    after    marriage    to    lead     the 

sleep    the    first   night    on   a    skin   with  young  couple  out  of  the  hut  to  greet 

their  heads  towards  the  west ;   "  for  the  the  rising  sun.       The   same   custom   is 

marriage    is   not   considered  as  ratified  said  to   be   still   practised   in    Iran  and 

till  the  rising  sun  shines  on   their  feet  Central  Asia,  the  belief  being  that   the 

the  succeeding  morning."    T.J.  Hutch-  beams  of  the  rising  sun  are  the  surest 

inson,  "The  Chaco  Indians,"  Transact.  means  of  impregnating  the  new   bride. 

Ethnolog.  Soc.\\\.  ;^2J.      At  old  Hindoo  Vambery,  Das  Turke7ivolk,  p.   112. 

marriages,   the   first  ceremony  was  the  ^  Above,  vol.  i.  p.   170. 

"  Impregnation  -  rite  "    (Garbhddhdna).  2  Native  Tfibes  0/  South  Australia, 

"During  the   previous  day  the  young  p.   186;   E.  J.  Y.yxQ, Journals,  ii.    295, 

married    woman    was    made     to    look  304;   W.    Ridley,  Kamilaroi,  ■^.    157; 

towards  the  sun,   or  in  some  way  ex-  Journ.    Anthrop.  hist.  ii.  268,    ix.  459 

posed   to  its  rays."      Monier  Williams,  sq.  ;  Brough  Smyth,  Aborigines  of  Vic- 

Keligioiis  Life  and  Thought  in  India,  toria,    i.    65,    236.       Cp.    Sir    George 

p.  354.      Amongst  the  Turks  of  Siberia  Grey,  Journals,    ii.    344  ;  J.    Dawson, 

it    was    formerly    the    custom     on    the  Aiistralian  Aborigines,  ci.  sq. 


IV  WOMEN  SECLUDED  239 

at  the  time  when  she  ought  to  be  kept  in  strict 
retirement,  men  become  fixed  in  whatever  position 
they  happen  to  occupy,  with  whatever  they  were 
holding  in  their  hands,  and  are  changed  into  trees 
which  talk/  The  Guayquiries  of  the  Orinoco  think 
that,  when  a  woman  has  her  courses,  everything 
upon  which  she  steps  will  die,  and  that  if  a  man 
treads  on  the  place  where  she  has  passed,  his  legs 
will  immediately  swell  up.^  The  Creek  and  kindred 
Indians  of  the  United  States  compelled  women  at 
menstruation  to  live  in  separate  huts  at  some  distance 
from  the  village.  There  the  women  had  to  stay,  at 
the  risk  of  being  surprised  and  cut  off  by  enemies. 
It  was  thought  "a  most  horrid  and  dangerous  pollu- 
tion "  to  go  near  the  women  at  such  times  ;  and  the 
danger  extended  to  enemies  who,  if  they  slew  the 
women,  had  to  cleanse  themselves  from  the  pollution 
by  means  of  certain  sacred  herbs  and  roots.^  Similarly, 
among  the  Chippeways  and  other  Indians  of  the 
Hudson  Bay  Territory,  women  at  such  seasons  are 
excluded  from  the  camp,  and  take  up  their  abode  in 
huts  of  branches.  They  wear  long  hoods,  which 
effectually  conceal  the  head  and  breast.  They  may 
not  touch  the  household  furniture  nor  any  objects 
used  by  men  ;  for  their  touch  "  is  supposed  to  defile 
them,  so  that  their  subsequent  use  would  be  followed 
by  certain  mischief  or  misfortune,"  such  as  disease  or 
death.  They  may  not  walk  on  the  common  paths 
nor  cross  the  tracks  of  animals.  They  "  are  never 
permitted  to  walk  on  the  ice  of  rivers  or  lakes,  or  near 
the  part  where  the  men  are  hunting  beaver,  or  where 

1  Bleek,  Brief  Account  of  Bushman  Folk-lore,  p.  14  ;  cp.  ib.  p.  10. 

^  Gumilla,  Histoire  de  V  Orenoque,  i.  249. 

3  James  Adair,  History  of  the  American  Indians,  p.   123  sq. 


240  WOMEN  SECLUDED  chap. 

a  fishing- net  is  set,  for  fear  of  averting  their  success. 
They  are  also  prohibited  at  those  times  from  partaking 
of  the  head  of  any  animal,  and  even  from  walking  in 
or  crossing  the  track  where  the  head  of  a  deer,  moose, 
beaver,  and  many  other  animals  have  lately  been 
carried,  either  on  a  sledge  or  on  the  back.  To  be 
guilty  of  a  violation  of  this  custom  is  considered  as  of 
the  greatest  importance  ;  because  they  firmly  believe 
that  it  would  be  a  means  of  preventing  the  hunter 
from  having  an  equal  success  in  his  future  excursions."^ 
So  the  Lapps  forbid  women  at  menstruation  to  walk 
on  that  part  of  the  shore  where  the  fishers  are  in  the 
habit  of  setting  out  their  fish,^ 

Amongst  the  civilised  nations  of  Europe  the  super- 
stitions which  have  prevailed  on  this  subject  are  not 
less  extravagant.  In  the  oldest  existing  cyclopaedia — 
the  Natural  History  of  Pliny — the  list  of  dangers 
apprehended  from  menstruation  is  longer  than  any 
furnished  by  savages.  According  to  Pliny,  the  touch 
of  a  menstruous  woman  turned  wine  to  vinegar,  blighted 
crops,  killed  seedlings,  blasted  gardens,  brought  down 
the  fruit  from  trees,  dimmed  mirrors,  blunted  razors, 
rusted  iron  and  brass  (especially  at  the  waning  of  the 
moon),  killed  bees,  or  at  least  drove  them  from  their 
hives,  caused  mares  to  miscarry,  and  so  forth. ^ 
Similarly,  in  various  parts  of  Europe,  it  is  still 
believed  that  if  a  woman  in  her  courses  enters  a 
brewery  the  beer  will  turn  sour ;  if  she  touches  beer, 
wine,  vinegar,  or  milk,  it  will   go   bad  ;    if  she  makes 


1  S.  Yiea.rr\e,  Journey  to  the  A^orf kern  niarchiaeeoriimquelinp(avitaetreligione 
Ocean,   p.    314   s<j.;  Alex.    Mackenzie,  pristina  (Copenhagen,  1767),  p.  494. 
Voyages  throiii^^h  the  Continent  of  North  ^  Pliny,    Nat.    Hist.    vii.    §   64   sq., 

America,  cxxiii. ;   Petitot,  Monographic  xxviii.    %  ']']  sqq.      Cp.    Geoponica,  xii. 

lies  Dhii-DindjiS,  p.  75  sq.  c.  20,  5,  and  c.  25,  2  ;  Columella,  xi. 

2  C.   Leemius,  De  Lapponibits  Fin-  3,  50. 


WOMEN  SECLUDED  241 


jam,  it  will  not  keep  ;  if  she  mounts  a  mare,  it  will 
miscarry  ;  if  she  touches  buds,  they  will  wither ;  if 
she  climbs  a  cherry-tree,  it  will  die.^ 

Thus  the  object  of  secluding  women  at  menstruation 
is  to  neutralise  the  dangerous  influences  which  are  sup- 
posed to  emanate  from  them  at  such  times.  That  the 
danger  is  believed  to  be  especially  great  at  the  first  men- 
struation appears  from  the  unusual  precautions  taken 
to  isolate  girls  at  this  crisis.  Two  of  these  precautions 
have  been  illustrated  above,  namely,  the  rules  that  the 
girl  may  not  touch  the  ground  nor  see  the  sun.  The 
general  effect  of  these  rules  is  to  keep  the  girl  suspended, 
so  to  say,  between  heaven  and  earth.  Whether  en- 
veloped in  her  hammock  and  slung  up  to  the  roof,  as  in 
South  America,  or  elevated  above  the  ground  in  a  dark 
and  narrow  cage,  as  in  New  Ireland,  she  may  be  con- 
sidered to  be  out  of  the  way  of  doing  mischief,  since, 
being  shut  ofT  both  from  the  earth  and  from  the  sun, 
she  can  poison  neither  of  these  great  sources  of  life  by 
her  deadly  contagion.  In  short,  she  is  rendered  harm- 
less by  being,  in  electrical  language,  insulated.  But 
the  precautions  thus  taken  to  isolate  or  insulate  the  girl 
are  dictated  by  a  regard  for  her  own  safety  as  well  as 
for  the  safety  of  others.  For  it  is  thought  that  the  girl 
herself  would  suffer  if  she  were  to  neglect  the  prescribed 

1  A.    Schleicher,    Volkstiimliches  aits  35,  3  :   Geoponica,  xii.  8,  5  sq.;  Aehan, 

Sonnenherg,  p.   134;   B.   Souche,  Croy-  Nat.  Anivi.  vi.  36.      A  similar  remedy 

ajices.  Presages  et  Traditions  diverses,  p.  is  employed  for  the  same  purpose  by 

II;     v.      Fossel,      Volksmedicin     tind  North  American  Indians  and  European 

viedicini seller     Aberglaube    in     Steier-  peasants.      Schoolcraft,  Indian    Tribes, 

mark     (Graz,     18S6),    p.     124.       The  v.  70;  Wiedemann,   Aits  dem  inneren 

Greeks    and    Romans    thought    that   a  itnd  ditssern  Leben  der  Ehsten,  p.  484. 

field  was  completely  protected  against  Cp.     Haltrich,     Zur     Volkskunde    der 

insects  if  a  menstruous  woman  walked  Siebenbiirger  Sachsen,    p.    280  ;   Hein- 

round  it  with  bare  feet  and  streaming  rich,  Agrarische  Sitten  und  Geb^'iiucke 

hair.       Pliny,    Nat.    Hist.    xvii.     266,  unter  den    Sachsen    Siebenbiirgens,    p. 

xxviii.    78;    Columella,     x.    358    sq.,  14;  Grimm,  Deutsche  Alythologie,^  \\\. 

xi.  3,  64  ;  Palladius,  De  re  nistica,  i.  468. 

VOL.    II  R 


242  SECLUSION  OF  chap. 

regimen.  Thus  Zulu  girls,  as  we  have  seen,  believe 
that  they  would  shrivel  to  skeletons  if  the  sun  were  to 
shine  on  them  at  puberty,  and  in  some  Brazilian  tribes 
the  girls  think  that  a  transgression  of  the  rules  would 
entail  sores  on  the  neck  and  throat.  In  short,  the  girl 
is  viewed  as  charged  with  a  powerful  force  which,  if 
not  kept  within  bounds,  may  prove  the  destruction  both 
of  the  girl  herself  and  of  all  with  whom  she  comes  in 
contact.  To  repress  this  force  within  the  limits  neces- 
sary for  the  safety  of  all  concerned  is  the  object  of  the 
taboos  in  question. 

The  same  explanation  applies  to  the  observance  of 
the  same  rules  by  divine  kings  and  priests.  The  un- 
cleanness,  as  it  is  called,  of  girls  at  puberty  and  the 
sanctity  of  holy  men  do  not,  to  the  primitive  mind, 
differ  from  each  other.  They  are  only  different  mani- 
festations of  the  same  supernatural  energy  which,  like 
energy  in  general,  is  in  itself  neither  good  nor  bad, 
but  becomes  beneficent  or  maleficent  according  to  its 
application.^  Accordingly,  if,  like  girls  at  puberty, 
divine  personages  may  neither  touch  the  ground  nor  see 
the  sun,  the  reason  is,  on  the  one  hand,  a  fear  lest  their 
divinity  might,  at  contact  with  earth  or  heaven,  dis- 
charge itself  with  fatal  violence  on  either ;  and,  on  the 
other  hand,  an  apprehension,  that  the  divine  being, 
thus  drained  of  his  ethereal  virtue,  might  thereby  be 
incapacitated  for  the  future  performance  of  those  super- 
natural functions,  upon  the  proper  discharge  of  which 
the  safety  of  the  people  and  even  of  the  world  is  be- 
lieved to  hang.  Thus  the  rules  in  question  fall  under 
the  head  of  the  taboos  which  we  examined  in  the 
second  chapter ;  they  are  intended  to  preserve  the  life 

1  For  an  example  of  the  beneficent   application   of  the    menstrual    energy, 
see  note  on  p.  241. 


DIVINE  PERSONS 


H3 


of  the  divine  person  and  with  it  the  hfe  of  his  subjects 
and  worshippers.  Nowhere,  it  is  thought,  can  his 
precious  yet  dangerous  Hfe  be  at  once  so  safe  and  so 
harmless  as  when  it  is  neither  in  heaven  nor  in  earth, 
but,  as  far  as  possible,  suspended  between  the  two.^ 


1  The  rules  just  discussed  do  not 
hold  exclusively  of  the  persons  men- 
tioned in  the  text,  but  are  applicable  in 
certain  circumstances  to  other  tabooed 
persons  and  things.  Whatever,  in  fact, 
is  permeated  by  the  mysterious  virtue 
of  taboo  may  need  to  be  isolated  from 
earth  and  heaven.  Mourners  are  taboo 
all  the  world  over ;  accordingly  in 
mourning  the  Ainos  wear  peculiar  caps 
in  order  that  the  sun  may  not  shine 
upon  their  heads.  Bastian,  Die  Volker 
lies  ostlichen  Asien,  v.  366.  During  a 
solemn  fast  of  three  days  the  Indians 
of  Costa  Rica  eat  no  salt,  speak  as  little 
as  possible,  light  no  fires,  and  stay 
strictly  indoors,  or  if  they  go  out  during 
the  day  they  carefully  cover  themselves 
from  the  light  of  the  sun,  believing  that 
exposure  to  the  sun's  rays  would  turn 
them  black.  W.  M.  Gabb,  Indian 
Tribes  and  Languages  of  Costa  Rica, 
p.  510.  On  Yule  night  it  has  been 
customary  in  parts  of  Sweden  from 
time  immemorial  to  go  on  pilgrimage, 
whereby  people  learn  many  secret 
things  and  know  what  is  to  happen 
in  the  coming  year.  As  a  preparation 
for  this  pilgrimage,  "some  secrete  them- 
selves for  three  days  previously  in  a 
dark  cellar,  so  as  to  be  shut  out  alto- 
gether from  the  light  of  heaven.  Others 
retire  at  an  early  hour  of  the  preceding 
morning  to  some  out-of-the  way  place, 
such  as  a  hayloft,  where  they  bury 
themselves  in  the  hay,  that  they  may 
neither  hear  nor  see  any  living  creature ; 
and  here  they  remain,  in  silence  and 
fasting,  until  after  sundown ;  whilst 
there  are  those  who  think  it  sufficient 
if  they  rigidly  abstain  from  food  on  the 
day  before  commencing  their  wander- 
ings. During  this  period  of  probation 
a  man  ought  not  to  see  fire."  L.  Lloyd, 
Peasant  Life  in  Sweden,  p.  194.  Dur- 
ing the  sixteen  days  that  a  Pima  Indian 
is  undergoing  purification  for  killing  an 


Apache  he  may  not  see  a  blazing  fire. 
Bancroft,  Native  Races  of  the  Pacific 
States,  i.  553.  Again  warriors  on  the 
war  -  path  are  strictly  taboo  ;  hence 
Indians  may  not  sit  on  the  bare  ground 
the  whole  time  they  are  out  on  a  war- 
like expedition.  J.  Adair,  History  of  ^ 
the  American  Indians,  p.  382;  Narra- 
tive of  the  Captivity  and  Adventures  of 
John  Tanner,  p.  123.  The  holy  ark 
of  the  North  American  Indians  is 
deemed  "so  sacred  and  dangerous  to 
be  touched "  that  no  one,  except  the 
war  chief  and  his  attendant,  will  touch 
it  "under  the  penalty  of  incurring 
great  evil.  Nor  would  the  most 
inveterate  enemy  touch  it  in  the  woods 
for  the  very  same  reason."  In  carrying 
it  against  the  enemy  they  never  place 
it  on  the  ground,  but  rest  it  on  stones 
or  logs.  Adair,  History  of  the  A  nierican 
Indians,  p.  162  sq.  The  sacred  clam 
shell  of  the  Elk  clan  among  the  Omahas 
is  kept  in  a  sacred  bag,  which  is  never 
allowed  to  touch  the  ground.  E.  James, 
Expedition  from  Pittsburgh  to  the  Rocky 
Mountains,  ii.  47 ;  J.  Owen  Dorsey, 
"  Omaha  Sociology,"  Third  Report  of 
the  Bureau  of  Ethnology  (Washington, 
1884),  p.  226.  Newly  born  infants 
are  strongly  taboo ;  accordingly  in 
Loango  they  are  not  allowed  to  touch 
the  earth.  Pechuel-Loesche,  "  Indis- 
cretes  aus  Loango,"  Zeitschrift  fiir 
Ethnologic,  x.  (1878)  p.  29  sq.  In 
Laos  the  hunting  of  elephants  gives 
rise  to  many  taboos  ;  one  of  them  is 
that  the  chief  hunter  may  not  touch  the 
earth  with  his  foot.  Accordingly  when 
he  alights  from  his  elephant,  the  others 
spread  a  carpet  of  leaves  for  him  to 
step  upon.  E.  Aymonier,  Notes  siir  le 
Laos,  p.  26.  In  some  parts  of  Aber- 
deenshire, the  last  bit  of  standing  corn 
(which,  as  we  have  seen,  is  very  sacred) 
is  not  allowed  to  touch  the  ground  ; 
but  as  it  is  cut,  it  is  placed  on  the  lap 


244  BALDER 


\  2. — Balder 

A  god  whose  life  might  in  a  sense  be  said  to  be 
neither  in  heaven  nor  earth  but  between  the  two,  was 
the  Norse  Balder,  the  good  and  beautiful  god.  The 
story  of  his  death  is  as  follows  :  Once  on  a  time 
Balder  dreamed  heavy  dreams  which  seemed  to  fore- 
bode his  death.  Thereupon  the  gods  held  a  council 
and  resolved  to  make  him  secure  against  every  danger. 
So  the  goddess  Frigg  took  an  oath  from  fire  and  water, 
iron  and  all  metals,  stones  and  earth,  from  trees,  sick- 
nesses and  poisons,  and  from  all  four-footed  beasts,  birds, 
and  creeping  things,  that  they  would  not  hurt  Balder. 
When  this  was  done  Balder  was  deemed  invulnerable ; 
so  the  gods  amused  themselves  by  setting  him  in  their 
midst,  while  some  shot  at  him,  others  hewed  at  him, 
and  others  threw  stones  at  him.  But  whatever  they 
did,  nothing  could  hurt  him  ;  and  at  this  they  were  all 
glad.  Only  Loki,  the  mischief-maker,  was  displeased, 
and  he  went  in  the  guise  of  an  old  woman  to  Frigg, 
who  told  him  that  the  weapons  of  the  gods  could  not 
wound  Balder,  since  she  had  made  them  all  swear  not 
to  hurt  him.  Then  Loki  asked,  "  Have  all  things 
sworn  to  spare  Balder  }  "  She  answered,  "  East  of  Wal- 
halla  grows  a  plant  called  mistletoe  ;  it  seemed  to  me  too 

of    the     "gueedman."      W.     Gregor,  Prof.  J.  E.  Nourse  (Washington,  1879), 

"  Quelques  coutumes  du  Nord-Est  du  p.   no;   Gerard,  The  Land  beyond  the 

Comte  d'Aberdeen,"  Revue  des  Tradi-  Forest,  ii.  7.      In  Scotland,  when  water 

tions    popjilaires,     iii.     (1888)     485  B.  was  carried  from  sacred  wells  to  sick 

Sacred    food   may   not,   in   certain   cir-  people,  the  water-vessel  might  not  touch 

cumstances,    touch    the    ground.       F.  the  ground.      C.  F.  Gordon  Gumming, 

Grabowsky,     "  Der    Distrikt     Dusson  Li  the  Hebrides,  t^.  zw.      On  the  rela- 

Timor   in    Siidost  -  Borneo    und    seine  tion  of  spirits  to  the  ground,  compare 

Bewohner,"  Aitsland  (1884),  No.   24,  Denzil  Ibbetson  in  Panjab  Notes  and 

p.  474  ;  Ch.  F.  Hall,  iVarrative  of  the  Queries,  i.  No.  5. 
Second  Arctic  Expedition,    edited    by 


BALDER' S  DEATH  245 


young  to  swear."     So  Loki  went  and  pulled  the  mistle- 
toe and  took  It  to  the  assembly  of  the  gods.     There  he 
found  the  blind  god  Hodur  standing  at  the  outside  of 
the  circle.      Loki  asked  him,  "Why  do  you  not  shoot 
at  Balder?"      Hodur  answered,   "Because    I    do   not 
see  where  he   stands ;    besides    I    have   no  weapon." 
Then  said  Loki,  "Do  like  the  rest  and  show  Balder 
honour,  as  they  all  do.      I    will   show  you  where  he 
stands,  and  do  you  shoot  at  him  with  this  twig."    Hodur 
took  the  mistletoe   and   threw  it  at   Balder,  as   Loki 
directed  him.     The  mistletoe  struck  Balder  and  pierced 
him  through  and  through,  and  he  fell  down  dead.     And 
that  was  the  greatest  misfortune  that  ever  befel  gods 
and  men.     For  a  while  the  gods  stood  speechless,  then 
they  lifted  up  their  voices  and  wept  bitterly.     They 
took  Balder's  body  and  brought  it  to  the  sea- shore. 
There  stood   Balder's  ship  ;   it  was  called   Ringhorn, 
and  was  the  hugest  of  all  ships.     The  gods  wished  to 
launch  the  ship  and  to  burn  Balder's  body  on  it,  but 
the  ship  would  not  stir.     So  they  sent  for  a  giantess 
called  Hyrrockin.     She  came  riding  on  a  wolf  and  gave 
the  ship  such  a  push  that  fire  flashed  from  the  rollers 
and  all  the  earth    shook.     Then    Balder's  body  was 
taken  and  placed  on  the  funeral  pile   upon  his  ship. 
When  his  wife  Nanna  saw  that,   her  heart  burst  for 
sorrow  and  she  died.     So  she  was  laid  on  the  funeral 
pile  with  her  husband,  and  fire  was  put  to  it.      Balder's 
horse,  too,  with  all  its  trappings,  was  burned  on  the 
pile.^ 

The  circumstantiality  of  this  story  suggests  that  it 
belongs  to  the  extensive  class  of  myths  which  are  in- 


1  Die  Edda,  iibersetzt  von  K.  Sim-      length  by  Prof.  Rhys,  Celtic  Heathen- 
rock,8  pp.  286-288,  cp.  pp.  8,  34,  264.       do7n,  p.  529  sqq. 
In  English  the  Balder  stoiy  is  told  at 


246  FIRE  FESTIVALS 


vented  to  explain  ritual.  For  a  myth  is  never  so 
graphic  and  precise  in  its  details  as  when  it  is  a  simple 
transcript  of  a  ceremony  which  the  author  of  the  myth 
witnessed  with  his  eyes.  At  all  events,  if  it  can  be 
made  probable  that  rites  like  those  described  in  the 
Balder  myth  have  been  practised  by  Norsemen  and  by 
other  European  peoples,  we  shall  be  justified  in  infer- 
ring that  the  ritual  gave  birth  to  the  myth,  not  the 
myth  to  the  ritual.  For  while  many  cases  can  be 
shown  in  which  a  myth  has  been  invented  to  explain 
a  rite,  it  would  be  hard  to  point  to  a  single  case  in 
which  a  myth  has  given  rise  to  a  rite.  Ritual  may 
be  the  parent  of  myth,  but  can  never  be  its  child. ^ 

The  main  incidents  in  the  myth  of  Balder's  death 
are  two ;  first,  the  pulling  of  the  mistletoe,  and  second, 
the  death  and  burning  of  the  god.  Now  both  these 
incidents  appear  to  have  formed  parts  of  an  annual 
ceremony  once  observed  by  Celts  and  Norsemen. 
probably  also  by  Germans  and  Slavs. 

In  most  parts  of  Europe  the  peasants  have  been 
accustomed  from  time  immemorial  to  kindle  bonfires 
on  certain  days  of  the  year,  and  to  dance  round  them 
or  leap  over  them.  Customs  of  this  kind  can  be 
traced  back  on  historical  evidence  to  the  Middle  Ages,^' 
and  their  analogy  to  similar  customs  observed  in  anti- 
quity goes  with  strong  internal  evidence  to  prove 
that    their  origin    must    be   sought   in   a    period   long 

1  It  is  strange  to  find  so  learned  and  myth.    "ItalischeMythen,"^^£/«wc//£'j- 

judicious  a  student  of  custom  and  myth  Miiseum,   N.   F.   xxx.  228  sq.      Surely 

as   H.    Usener   exactly  inverting  their  the  myth  is  the  reflection  of  the  custom, 

trae    relation    to    each    other.       After  Men    not    only    fashion    gods   in   their 

showing  that  the  essential  features  of  own  likeness  (as  Xenophanes  long  ago 

the  myth  of  the  marriage  of  Mars  and  remarked)   but   make  them  think  and 

Nerio    have    their    counterpart    in    the  act  like  themselves.      Heaven  is  a  copy 

marriage   customs  of    peasants   at   the  of  earth,  not  earth  of  heaven, 

present  day,  he  proceeds  to  infer  that  -  See  Grimm,  Deutsche  Mytholoi^ic,'^ 

these  customs  are  the  reflection  of  the  i.  502,  510,  516. 


IN  EUROPE  247 


prior  to  the  spread  of  Christianity.  Indeed  the  earHest 
evidence  of  their  observance  in  Northern  Europe  is 
furnished  by  the  attempts  made  by  Christian  synods 
in  the  eighth  century  to  put  them  down  as  heathenish 
rites. ^  Not  uncommonly  effigies  are  burned  in  these 
fires,  or  a  pretence  is  made  of  burning  a  Hving  person 
in  them  ;  and  there  are  grounds  for  beHeving  that 
anciently  human  beings  were  actually  burned  on  these 
occasions.  A  brief  review  of  the  customs  in  ques- 
tion will  bring  out  the  traces  of  human  sacrifice,  and 
will  serve  at  the  same  time  to  throw  light  on  theii 
meaning.^ 

The  seasons  of  the  year  at  which  these  bonfires 
are  most  commonly  lit  are  spring  and  midsummer,  but 
in  some  places  they  are  kindled  at  Hallow  E'en 
(October  31st)  and  Christmas.  In  spring  the  first 
Sunday  in  Lent  (Quadragesima)  and  Easter  Eve  are 
the  days  on  which  in  different  places  the  ceremony  is 
observed.  Thus  in  the  Eifel  Mountains,  Rhenish 
Prussia,  on  the  first  Sunday  in  Lent  young  people 
used  to  collect  straw  and  brushwood  from  house  to 
house.  These  they  carried  to  an  eminence  and  piled 
them  up  round  a  tall,  slim,  beech-tree,  to  which  a  piece 
of  wood  was  fastened  at  right  angles  to  form  a  cross. 
The  structure  was  known  as  the  "hut"  or  "castle." 
Fire  was  set  to  it  and  the  young  people  marched  round 
the  blazing  "castle"  bareheaded,  each  carrying  a 
lighted  torch  and  praying  aloud.  Sometimes  a  straw 
man  was  burned  in  the  "hut."  People  observed  the 
direction  in  which  the  smoke  blew  from  the  fire.  If  it 
blew  towards  the  corn-fields,  it  was  a  sio-n   that  the 


1   Mannhardt,i?rt/^w/v^////j,  p.  518^(7.       hardt,    Baiimkultus,   kap.    vi.    p.    497 
^  In  the  following  survey  of  these      sqcj.      Compare  also  Grimm,  Deutsche 
fire-customs  I  follow  chiefly  W.  Mann-      Mythologie,^  i.  500  sqq. 


248  FIRE  FESTIVALS 


CHAP. 


harvest  would  be  abundant.  On  the  same  day,  in 
some  parts  of  the  Eifel,  a  great  wheel  was  made  of 
straw  and  dragged  by  three  horses  to  the  top  of  a  hill. 
Thither  the  village  boys  marched  at  nightfall,  set  fire 
to  the  wheel,  and  sent  it  rolling  down  the  slope.  Two 
lads  followed  it  with  levers  to  set  it  in  motion  again, 
in  case  it  should  anywhere  meet  with  a  check.^  About 
Echternach  the  same  ceremony  is  called  "burning  the 
witch."-  At  Voralberg  in  the  Tyrol  on  the  first  Sunday 
in  Lent  a  slender  young  hr-tree  is  surrounded  with  a 
pile  of  straw  and  fire -wood.  At  the  top  of  the  tree 
is  fastened  a  human  figure  called  the  "witch";  it  is 
made  of  old  clothes  and  stuffed  with  gunpowder.  At 
night  the  whole  is  set  on  hre  and  boys  and  girls  dance 
round  it,  swinging  torches  and  singing  rhymes  in  which 
the  words  "  corn  in  the  winnowing-basket,  the  plough 
in  the  earth  "  may  be  distinguished.^  In  Swabia  on 
the  first  Sunday  in  Lent  a  figure  called  the  "witch" 
or  the  "old  wife"  or  "winter's  grandmother"  is  made 
up  of  clothes  and  fastened  to  a  pole.  This  is  stuck  in 
the  middle  of  a  pile  of  wood,  to  which  fire  is  applied. 
While  the  "witch  "  is  burning  the  young  people  throw 
blazing  discs  into  the  air.  The  discs  are  thin  round 
pieces  of  wood,  a  few  inches  in  diameter,  with  notched 
edges  to  imitate  the  rays  of  the  sun  or  stars.  They 
have  a  hole  in  the  middle,  by  which  they  are  attached 
to  the  end  of  a  wand.  Before  the  disc  is  thrown  it  is 
set  on  fire,  the  wand  is  swung  to  and  fro,  and  the 
impetus  thus  communicated  to  the  disc  is  augmented 
by  dashing  the  rod  sharply  against  a  sloping  board. 
The   burning  disc   is   thus   thrown  off,  and  mounting 

1  Schmitz,  Sitten  itnd  Sageii  etc.  des  ^  B.  K.  p.  501. 

Eifler   Volkcs,  i.   pp.  21-25  ;  B.   K.  p.  3  Vonbun,    Beitrdge    zur    deutschen 

501-  Alythologie,  p.  20;  B.  K.  p.  501. 


IV  IN  LENT  249 

high  into  the  air,  describes  a  long  curve  before  it 
reaches  the  ground.  A  single  lad  may  fling  up  forty 
or  fifty  of  these  discs,  one  after  the  other.  The  object 
is  to  throw  them  as  high  as  possible.  The  wand  by 
which  they  are  hurled  must,  at  least  in  some  parts  of 
Swabia,  be  of  hazel.  Sometimes  the  lads  also  leap 
over  the  fire  brandishing  blazing  torches  of  pine-wood. 
The  charred  embers  of  the  burned  "witch"  and  discs 
are  taken  home  and  planted  in  the  flax-fields  the  same 
night,  in  the  belief  that  they  will  keep  vermin  from 
the  fields.^  In  the  Rhon  Mountains,  Bavaria,  on  the 
first  Sunday  in  Lent  the  people  used  to  march  to  the 
top  of  a  hill  or  eminence.  Children  and  lads  carried 
torches,  brooms  daubed  with  tar,  and  poles  swathed  in 
straw.  A  wheel,  wrapt  in  combustibles,  was  kindled 
and  rolled  down  the  hill ;  and  the  young  people  rushed 
about  the  fields  with  their  burning  torches  and  brooms, 
till  at  last  they  flung  them  in  a  heap,  and  standing 
round  them,  struck  up  a  hymn  or  a  popular  song. 
The  object  of  running  about  the  fields  with  the  blazing 
torches  was  to  "drive  away  the  wicked  sower."  Or  it 
was  done  in  honour  of  the  Virgin,  that  she  might 
preserve  the  fruits  of  the  earth  throughout  the  year 
and  bless  them." 

It  seems  hardly  possible  to  separate  from  these 
bonfires,  kindled  on  the  first  Sunday  in  Lent,  the  fires 
in  which,  about  the  same  season,  the  effigy  called 
Death  is  burned  as  part  of  the  ceremony  of  "carry- 
ing out  Death."     We  have  seen  that  at  Spachendorf, 


1  E.   Meier,  Detttsche  Sagen,  Sitten      deittscheii  Mythologie,  i.    p.    211,   No. 
iind  Gebrditche  aus  Schwaben,   p.    380      232,  B.  K.  p.  501  sq. 
sqq.;     Birlinger,     Volksthi'unliches    aus  2  Witzschel,  Sagen,  Sitten  tind  Ge- 

Schwaben,  ii.  59  sq,,  66  sq.;  Bavaria,       brdiicheaus  Thiiringen,-^.  \?><^;  Panzer, 
ii.    2,  p.   838  sq.;  Panzer,  Beitrag  zitr      Beitrag  zur  detttschen  Mythologie,  ii. 

207  ;  B.  K.  p.  500  sq. 


250  FIRE  FESTIVALS 


Austrian  Silesia,  on  the  morning  of  Rupert's  Day 
(Shrove  Tuesday  ?)  a  straw-man,  dressed  in  a  fur  coat 
and  a  fur  cap,  is  laid  in  a  hole  outside  the  village  and 
there  burned,  and  that  while  it  is  blazing  every  one 
seeks  to  snatch  a  fragment  of  it,  which  he  fastens  to 
a  branch  of  the  highest  tree  in  his  garden  or  buries  in 
his  field,  believing  that  this  will  make  the  crops  to 
grow  better.  The  ceremony  is  known  as  the  "  burying 
of  Death. "^  Even  when  the  straw-man  is  not  desig- 
nated as  Death,  the  meaning  of  the  observance  is 
probably  the  same  ;  for  the  name  Death,  as  I  have 
tried  to  show,  does  not  express  the  original  in- 
tention of  the  ceremony.  At  Cobern  in  the  Eifel 
Mountains  the  lads  make  up  a  straw-man  on  Shrove 
Tuesday.  The  effigy  is  formally  tried  and  accused 
of  having  perpetrated  all  the  thefts  that  have  been 
committed  in  the  neighbourhood  throughout  the 
year.  Being  condemned  to  death,  the  straw-man  is  led 
through  the  village,  shot,  and  burned  upon  a  pyre.  They 
dance  round  the  blazing  pile,  and  the  last  bride  must 
leap  over  it.^  In  Oldenburg  on  the  evening  of  Shrove 
Tuesday  people  used  to  make  long  bundles  of  straw, 
which  they  set  on  fire,  and  then  ran  about  the  fields 
waving  them,  shrieking,  and  singing  wild  songs. 
Finally  they  burnt  a  straw- man  on  the  field. ^  In 
the  district  of  Diisseldorf  the  straw -man  burned  on 
Shrove  Tuesday  was  made  of  an  unthreshed  sheaf  of 
corn.*  On  the  first  Monday  after  the  spring  equinox 
the  urchins  of  Zurich  drag  a  straw-man  on  a  little  cart 
through  the  streets,  while  at  the  same  time  the  girls 

^  Th.     Vernalcken,     Mythen     und  Eijler  Volkes,  i.  p.  20  ;  B.  K.  p.  499. 
Bi'diichedesVolkes  in  Oestcrreich,^.  2^'},  ^  Strackerjan,   Aberglanbc   u.    Sagen 

sq.',  B.  K.  p.   498.      See  above,  vol.  i.  ans    detn    Hei-zogthum    Oldenburg,    ii. 

p.  267.  39,  No.  306  ;  B.  K.  p.  499. 

2  Schmitz,     Sitteii,     it.     Sagen     des  ^  B.  K.  p.  499. 


AT  EASTER  251 


carry  about  a  May -tree.  When  vespers  ring,  the 
straw-man  is  burned/  In  the  district  of  Aachen  on 
Ash  Wednesday  a  man  used  to  be  encased  in  peas- 
straw  and  taken  to  an  appointed  place.  Here  he 
sHpped  quietly  out  of  his  straw  casing,  which  was  then 
burned,  the  children  thinking  that  it  was  the  man  who 
was  being  burned.-  In  the  Val  di  Ledro  (Tyrol)  on 
the  last  day  of  the  Carnival  a  figure  is  made  up  of 
straw  and  brushwood  and  then  burned.  The  figure  is 
called  the  Old  Woman,  and  the  ceremony  "  burning 
the  Old  Woman."' 

Another  occasion  on  which  these  fire-festivals  are 
held  is  Easter  Eve,  the  Saturday  before  Easter  Sun- 
day. On  that  day  it  has  been  customary  in  Catholic 
countries  to  extinguish  all  the  lights  in  the  churches, 
and  then  to  make  a  new  fire,  sometimes  with  flint  and 
steel,  sometimes  with  a  burning-glass.  At  this  fire  is 
lit  the  Easter  candle,  which  is  then  used  to  rekindle  all 
the  extinguished  lights  in  the  church.  In  many  parts 
of  Germany  a  bonfire  is  also  kindled,  by  means  of  the 
new  fire,  on  some  open  space  near  the  church.  It  is 
consecrated,  and  the  people  bring  sticks  of  oak,  walnut, 
and  beech,  which  they  char  in  the  fire,  and  then  take 
home  with  them.  Some  of  these  charred  sticks  are 
thereupon  burned  at  home  in  a  newly-kindled  fire,  with 
a  prayer  that  God  will  preserve  the  homestead  from 
fire,  lightning,  and  hail.  Thus  every  house  receives 
"  new  fire."  Some  of  the  sticks  are  placed  in  the 
fields,  gardens,  and  meadows,  with  a  prayer  that  God 
will  keep  them  from  blight  and  hail.  Such  fields  and 
gardens  are  thought  to  thrive  more  than  others  ;  the 
corn  and  the  plants  that  grow  in  them  are  not  beaten 

1  B.  K.  p.  498  sq.  -  B.  K.  p.  499- 

3  Schneller,  Mdrchen  u.  Sagen  aus  Wdhchtirol,  p.  234  sq. ;  B.  K.  p.  499  ^q- 


FIRE  FESTIVALS 


down  by  hall,  nor  devoured  by  mice,  vermin,  and 
beetles,  no  witch  harms  them,  and  the  ears  of  corn 
stand  close  and  full.  The  charred  sticks  are  also 
applied  to  the  plough.  The  ashes  of  the  Easter  bon- 
fire, together  with  the  ashes  of  the  consecrated  palm- 
branches,  are  mixed  with  the  seed  at  sowing.  A 
wooden  figure  called  Judas  is  sometimes  burned  in  the 
consecrated  bonfire.^ 

Sometimes  instead  of  the  consecrated  bonfire  a 
profane  fire  used  to  be  kindled  on  Easter  Eve.  In 
the  afternoon  the  lads  of  the  village  collected  firewood 
and  carried  it  to  a  corn-field  or  to  the  top  of  a  hill. 
Here  they  piled  it  together  and  fastened  in  the  midst 
of  it  a  pole  with  a  cross-piece,  all  wrapt  in  straw,  so 
that  it  looked  like  a  man  with  outstretched  arms.  This 
figure  was  called  the  Easter-man,  or  the  Judas.  In 
the  evening  the  lads  lit  their  lanterns  at  the  new  holy 
fire  in  the  church,  and  ran  at  full  speed  to  the  pile. 
The  one  who  reached  it  first  set  fire  to  it  and  to  the 
effigy.  No  women  or  girls  might  be  present,  though 
they  were  allowed  to  watch  the  scene  from  a  distance. 
Great  was  the  joy  while  the  effigy  was  burning.  The 
ashes  were  collected  and  thrown  at  sunrise  into  run- 
ning water,  or  were  scattered  over  the  fields  on  Easter 
Monday.  At  the  same  time  the  palm  branches  which 
had  been  consecrated  on  Palm  Sunday,  and  sticks 
which  had  been  charred  in  the  fire  and  consecrated  on 
Good  Friday,  were  also  stuck  up  in  the  fields.  The 
object  was  to  preserve  the  fields  from  hail'  In  Miin- 
sterland,  these  Easter  fires  are  always  kindled    upon 


^  B.    K.    pp.     502-505  ;    Wuttke,  1289;  Bavaria,  i.  i,  p.  371. 
Der   deutsche    Volksabcrglatibe,'^   §    81  ;  2  Panzer,     Beitrag     ziir     deittschen 

Zingerle,  Sitten,  Brduche  tmd  Meimin-  Mythologie,  i.  p.  212  sq.,  ii.  p.  78  sq.  ; 

gendes  Tirokr  Volkes,"^  p.  149,  §§  1286-  B.  K.  p.  505. 


AT  EASTER  253 


certain  definite  hills,  which  are  hence  known  as  Easter 
or  Pascal  Mountains,  The  whole  community  assembles 
about  the  fire.  Fathers  of  families  form  an  inner  circle 
round  it.  An  outer  circle  is  formed  by  the  young  men 
and  maidens,  who,  singing  Easter  hymns,  march  round 
and  round  the  fire  in  the  direction  of  the  sun,  till  the 
blaze  dies  down.  Then  the  girls  jump  over  the  fire  in 
a  line,  one  after  the  other,  each  supported  by  two 
young  men  who  hold  her  hands  and  run  beside  her. 
When  the  fire  has  burned  out,  the  whole  assemblage 
marches  in  solemn  procession  to  the  church,  singing 
hymns.  They  march  thrice  round  the  church,  and 
then  break  up.  In  the  twilight  boys  with  blazing 
bundles  of  straw  run  over  the  fields  to  make  them 
fruitful.^  In  Holland,  also,  Easter  fires  used  to  be 
kindled  on  the  highest  eminences,  the  people  danced 
round  them,  and  leaped  through  the  flames.'  In 
Schaumburg,  the  Easter  bonfires  may  be  seen  blazing 
on  all  the  mountains  around  for  miles.  They  are  made 
with  a  tar  barrel  fastened  to  a  pine-tree,  which  is  wrapt 
in  straw.  The  people  dance  singing  round  them.^ 
Easter  bonfires  are  also  common  in  the  Harz  Mountains 
and  in  Brunswick,  Hanover,  and  Westphalia.  They 
are  generally  lit  upon  particular  heights  and  moun- 
tains which  are  hence  called  Easter  Mountains.  In 
the  Harz  the  fire  is  commonly  made  by  piling  brush- 
wood about  a  tree  and  setting  it  on  fire,  and  blazing 
tar  barrels  are  often  rolled  down  into  the  valley.  In 
Osterode,  every  one  tries  to  snatch  a  brand  from 
the  bonfire  and  rushes  about  with  it  ;  the  better  it 
burns,  the  more  lucky  it  is.      In  Grund  there  are  torch 

1  Strackerjan,  Aberglaube  und  Sagen  2  Wolf,    ,Beitrage      ziir      deutschen 

aits  dein  Herzogthum  Oldenburg,  ii.  p.       Alythologie,  i.  75  sq.;  B.  K.  p.  506. 
43  sq..  No.  313  ;  B.  K.  p.  505  sq.  ^  Grimm,    Deutsche    ]\Iytho!ogie,^   i. 

512  ;  B.  K.  p.  506  sq. 


254  EASTER  BONFIRES  chap. 

races. ^  In  the  Altmark,  the  Easter  bonfires  are  com- 
posed of  tar  barrels,  bee-hives,  etc.,  piled  round  a  pole. 
The  young  folk  dance  round  the  fire  ;  and  when  it  has 
died  out,  the  old  folk  come  and  collect  the  ashes,  which 
they  preserve  as  a  remedy  for  the  ailments  of  bees. 
It  is  also  believed  that  as  far  as  the  blaze  of  the  bon- 
fire is  visible,  the  corn  will  grow  well  throughout  the 
year,  and  no  conflagration  will  break  out.'  In  some 
parts  of  Bavaria,  bonfires  were  kindled  at  Easter 
upon  steep  mountains,  and  burning  arrows  or  discs  of 
wood  were  shot  high  into  the  air,  as  in  the  Swabian 
custom  already  described.  Sometimes,  instead  of  the 
discs,  an  old  waggon  wheel  was  wrapt  in  straw,  set  on 
fire,  and  sent  rolling  down  the  mountain.  The  lads 
who  hurled  the  discs  received  painted  Easter  eggs 
from  the  girls. ^  In  some  parts  of  Swabia  the  Easter 
fires  might  not  be  kindled  with  iron  or  flint  or  steel ; 
but  only  by  the  friction  of  wood.^  At  Braunrode  in 
the  Harz  Mountains  it  was  the  custom  to  burn  squirrels 
in  the  Easter  bonfire.^  In  the  Altmark,  bones  were 
burned  in  it."^ 

In  the  central  Highlands  of  Scotland  bonfires, 
known  as  the  Beltane  fires,  were  formerly  kindled 
with  great  ceremony  on  the  ist  of  May,  and  the 
traces  of  human  sacrifices  at  them  were  particularly 
clear  and  unequivocal.  In  the  neighbourhood  of 
Callander,   in   Perthshire,  the  custom  lasted   down   to 


1  H.  Vx6\^&,Harzhildey,  p.  63  ;  Kuhn  Schwaben,  ii.  p.  82,  No.  106  ;  B.  K.  p. 

unci     Schwartz,    Norddciitsche    Sagen,  508. 

Jlliiirhen  und  Gebrdiuhe,  p.  373  ;  i>.  A'  ^  B.  A',  p.  508  ;  cp.  Wolf,  Beit  rage  ziir 

p.  507.  deiitsch.  Myth.  i.  74 ;  Grimm,  Deutsche 

^  Kuhn,      Mdrl'ische     Sagen      und  Myth.^ '\.  512.      The  two  latter  writers 

Mdrchen,  p.  312  sq.;  B.  K.  p.  507.  only  state  that  before   the   fires    were 

3  Panzer,  Beitrag  zitr  deiitschen  A/y-  kindled    it    was    customary    to    hunt 

thologie,  i.  p.  211  sq.;  B.  K.  p.  507  sq.  squirrels  in  the  woods. 

*  Birlinger,       Volksthiimliches      aits  ^  Kuhn,  I.e.;  B,  K.  p.  50S. 


BELTANE  FIRES  255 


the  close  of  last  century.  The  fires  were  lit  by  the 
people  of  each  hamlet  on  a  hill  or  knoll  round  which 
their  cattle  were  pasturing.  Hence  various  eminences 
in  the  Highlands  are  known  as  "the  hill  of  the  fires," 
just  as  in  Germany  some  mountains  take  their  name 
from  the  Easter  fires  which  are  kindled  upon  them. 
On  the  morning  of  May  Day  the  people  repaired  to 
a  hill  or  knoll  and  cut  a  round  trench  in  the  green 
sod,  leaving  in  the  centre  a  platform  of  turf  large 
enough  to  contain  the  whole  company.  On  this  turf 
they  seated  themselves,  and  in  the  middle  was  placed  a 
pile  of  wood  or  other  fuel,  which  of  old  they  kindled 
with  tein-eigin — that  is,  forced  fire  or  need -fire.  The 
way  of  making  the  need-fire  was  this:  "The  night 
before,  all  the  fires  in  the  country  were  carefully 
extinguished,  and  next  morning  the  materials  for 
exciting  this  sacred  fire  were  prepared.  The  most 
primitive  method  seems  to  be  that  which  was  used 
in  the  islands  of  Skye,  Mull,  and  Tiree.  A  well- 
seasoned  plank  of  oak  was  procured,  in  the  midst  of 
which  a  hole  was  bored.  A  wimble  of  the  same 
timber  was  then  applied,  the  end  of  which  they  fitted 
to  the  hole.  But  in  some  parts  of  the  mainland  the 
machinery  was  different.  They  used  a  frame  of 
green  wood,  of  a  square  form,  in  the  centre  of  which 
was  an  axle-tree.  In  some  places  three  times  three 
persons,  in  others  three  times  nine,  were  required  for 
turning  round,  by  turns,  the  axle-tree  or  wimble.  If 
any  of  them  had  been  guilty  of  murder,  adultery, 
theft,  or  other  atrocious  crime,  it  was  imagined  either 
that  the  fire  would  not  kindle,  or  that  it  would  be 
devoid  of  its  usual  virtue.  So  soon  as  any  sparks 
were  emitted  by  means  of  the  violent  friction,  they 
applied  a  species  of  agaric  which  grows  on  old  birch- 


256  BELTANE  FIRES  chap. 

trees,  and  is  very  combustible.  This  fire  had  the 
appearance  of  being  immediately  derived  from  heaven, 
and  manifold  were  the  virtues  ascribed  to  it.  They 
esteemed  it  a  preservative  against  witchcraft,  and  a 
sovereign  remedy  against  malignant  diseases,  both  in 
the  human  species  and  in  cattle  ;  and  by  it  the 
strongest  poisons  were  supposed  to  have  their  nature 
changed."  For  many  years,  however,  before  the  close 
of  last  century,  the  Beltane  fires  were  kindled  in  the 
usual  way.  The  fire  being  lit,  the  company  prepared  a 
custard  of  eggs  and  milk,  which  they  ate.  Afterwards 
they  amused  themselves  a  while  by  singing  and 
dancing  round  the  fire.  Then  "  they  knead  a  cake 
of  oatmeal,  which  is  toasted  at  the  embers  against  a 
stone.  After  the  custard  is  eaten  up  they  divide  the 
cake  into  so  many  portions,  as  similar  as  possible  to 
one  another  in  size  and  shape,  as  there  are  persons  in 
the  company.  They  daub  one  of  these  portions  all 
over  with  charcoal  until  it  be  perfectly  black.  They 
put  all  the  bits  of  cake  into  a  bonnet.  Every  one, 
blindfold,  draws  out  a  portion.  He  who  holds  the 
bonnet  is  entitled  to  the  last  bit.  Whoever  draws 
the  black  bit  is  the  devoted  person  who  is  to  be 
sacrificed  to  Baal,  whose  favour  they  mean  to  implore, 
in  rendering  the  year  productive  of  the  sustenance  of 
man  and  beast."  The  victim  thus  selected  "was 
called  cailleach  bealtine — i.e.  the  Beltane  carline,  a 
term  of  great  reproach.  Upon  his  being  known,  part 
of  the  company  laid  hold  of  him,  and  made  a  show  of 
putting  him  into  the  fire  ;  but,  the  majority  inter- 
posing, he  was  rescued.  And  in  some  places  they 
laid  him  fiat  on  the  ground,  making  as  if  they  would 
quarter  him.  Afterwards  he  was  pelted  with  egg- 
shells, and  retained  the  odious  appellation  during  the 


BELTANE  FIRES  257 


whole  year.  And,  while  the  feast  was  fresh  in  people's 
memory,  they  affected  to  speak  of  the  cailleach  bealtine 
as  dead."  He  had  to  leap  thrice  through  the  flames, 
and  this  concluded  the  ceremony.^ 

Another  account  of  the  Beltane  festival,  written  in 
the  latter  half  of  last  century,  is  as  follows  :  "  On  the  ist 
of  May  the  herdsmen  of  every  village  hold  their  Bel- 
tien,  a  rural  sacrifice.  They  cut  a  square  trench  on  the 
ground,  leaving  the  turf  in  the  middle  ;  on  that  they 
make  a  fire  of  wood,  on  which  they  dress  a  large  caudle 
of  eggs,  butter,  oatmeal,  and  milk,  and  bring,  besides  the 
ingredients  of  the  caudle,  plenty  of  beer  and  whisky  ; 
for  each  of  the  company  must  contribute  something. 
The  rites  begin  with  spilling  some  of  the  caudle  on 
the  ground,  by  way  of  libation  ;  on  that  every  one 
takes  a  cake  of  oatmeal,  upon  which  are  raised  nine 
square  knobs,  each  dedicated  to  some  particular  being, 
the  supposed  preserver  of  their  flocks  and  herds,  or  to 
some  particular  animal,  the  real  destroyer  of  them  ; 
each  person  then  turns  his  face  to  the  fire,  breaks  off  a 
knob,  and,  flinging  it  over  his  shoulder,  says,  '  This  I 
give  to  thee,  preserve  thou  my  horses  ;  this  to  thee, 
preserve  thou  my  sheep  ;  and  so  on,'  After  that  they 
use  the  same  ceremony  to  the  noxious  animals  :  '  This 
I  give  to  thee,  O  fox  !  spare  thou  my  lambs  ;  this  to 
thee,  O  hooded  crow  !  this  to  thee,  O  eaqfle  ! '  When 
the  ceremony  is  over  they  dine  on  the  caudle  ;  and, 
after  the  feast  is  finished,  what  is  left  is  hid  by  two 
persons  deputed  for  that  purpose  ;  but  on  the  next 
Sunday  they  reassemble,  and  finish  the  reliques  of  the 


1  Brand,  Popular  Antiquities,  i.  224  Eighteenth  Centiay,  from  the  MSS.  of 

sq.,     Bohn's    ed.,     quoting     Sinclair's  John  Ramsay  of  Ochtertyre,  edited  by 

Statistical  Account  of  Scotland,   1794,  Alex.    Allardyce,  ii.    439-445  ;  B.   K. 

xi.  620 ;  Scotland  and  Scotsmett  in  the  p.  508. 

VOL.   II  S 


.58  MIDSUMMER  FIRES 


first  entertainment."  ^  The  ist  of  May  is  a  great 
popular  festival  in  the  more  midland  and  southern 
parts  of  Sweden.  On  the  preceding-  evening  huge 
bonfires,  which  should  be  lighted  by  striking  two 
flints  together,  blaze  on  all  the  hills  and  knolls. 
Every  large  hamlet  has  its  own  fire,  round  which  the 
young  people  dance  in  a  ring.  The  old  folk  notice 
whether  the  flames  incline  to  the  north  or  to  the  south. 
In  the  former  case  the  spring  will  be  cold  and  back- 
ward ;  in  the  latter  mild  and  genial.^ 

But    the  season   at  which   these  fire- festivals   are 
most  generally  held  all  over   Europe  is  the  summer 
solstice,  that  is.  Midsummer  Eve  (23d  June)  or  Mid- 
summer Day  (24th  June).     According  to  a  mediaeval 
writer   the  three  great  features  of  this   festival   were 
the    bonfires,   the  procession  with  torches  round   the 
fields,  and  the  custom  of  rolling  a  wheel.     The  writer 
adds    that    the    smoke    drives   away  harmful  dragons 
which  cause  sickness,  and  he  explains  the  custom  of 
rolling  the  wheel  to  mean  that  the  sun  has  now  reached 
the  highest  point  in  the  ecliptic,  and  begins  thence- 
forward to  descend.^     From  his  description,  which  is 
still  applicable,  we  see  that  the  main  features  of  the 
midsummer  fire-festival  are  identical  with  those  which 
characterise  the  spring  festivals.      In  Swabia  lads  and 
lasses,  hand  in  hand,  leap  over  the  midsummer  bonfire, 
praying  that  the  hemp  may  grow  three  ells  high,  and 
they  set  fire  to  wheels  of  straw  and  send  them  rolling 
down  the  hill*     In   Lechrain  bonfires  are  kindled  on 

1  Pennant,     "Tour    in     Scotland,"  ^  £_  j^\  p,  509;  Brand,  Pop.  Antiq. 

Pinkerton's    'Voyages  and   Travels,   iii.  i.  298^(7.;  Grimm,  Z>.  MA  \.  516. 

49 ;    Brand,    Popida7-    Antiquities,    i.  *    Birlinger,       Volksthiimliches      aiis 

226.  Schwaben,  ii.   p.    96  sqq.    No.    128,   p. 

103  sq.  No.  129;   E.    Meier,  Deutsche 

"  L.  Lloyd,  Peasant  Life  in  S-weden,  Sagen,    Sitten     ntid    Gebrduche     atts 

p.  233  sq.  Schwaben,  p.  423  sqq.;  B.  K.  p.  510. 


IV  MIDSUMMER  FIRES  259 

the  mountains  on  Midsummer  Day  ;  and  besides  the 
bonfire  a  tall  beam,  thickly  wrapt  in  straw,  and  sur- 
mounted by  a  cross-piece,  is  burned  in  many  places. 
Round  this  cross,  as  it  burns,  the  lads  dance ;  and  when 
the  flames  have  subsided,  the  young  people  leap  over 
the  fire  in  pairs,  a  young  man  and  a  young  woman 
together.  It  is  believed  that  the  flax  will  grow  that 
year  as  high  as  they  leap  over  the  fire  ;  and  that  if  a 
charred  billet  be  taken  from  the  fire  and  stuck  in  a  flax 
field  it  will  promote  the  growth  of  the  flax.^  At  Def- 
fingen,  as  they  jumped  over  the  midsummer  bonfire, 
they  cried  out,  "  Flax,  flax  !  may  the  flax  this  year  grow 
seven  ells  high !  "  ^  "  In  Bohemia  bonfires  are  kindled 
on  many  of  the  mountains  on  Midsummer  Eve ;  boys 
and  girls,  hand  in  hand,  leap  over  them  ;  cart-wheels 
smeared  with  resin  are  ignited  and  sent  rolling  down 
the  hill ;  and  brooms  covered  with  tar  and  set  on  fire 
are  swung  about  or  thrown  high  into  the  air.  The 
handles  of  the  brooms  or  embers  from  the  fire  are 
preserved  and  stuck  in  gardens  to  protect  the 
vegetables  from  caterpillars  and  gnats.  Sometimes 
the  boys  run  down  the  hillside  in  troops,  brandishing 
the  blazing  brooms  and  shouting.  The  bonfire  is 
sometimes  made  by  stacking  wood  and  branches  round 
the  trunk  of  a  tree  and  setting  the  whole  on  fire.^ 

In  old  farm-houses  of  the  Surenthal  and  Winenthal 
a  couple  of  holes  or  a  whole  row  of  them  may  some- 
times be  seen  facing  each  other  in  the  door-posts  of  the 
barn  or  stable.  Sometimes  the  holes  are  smooth  and 
round ;  sometimes  they  are  deeply  burnt  and  blackened, 

1  Leoprechting,  Aiis  dem  Lcchrain,  3  Reinsberg-Duringsfeld,  Fest  -  Kal- 
p.  182  sq.;  B.  K.  p.  510.  Cp.  Panzer,  ender  aiis  Bohmcn,  pp.  306-311 ;  B.  K. 
Beit  rag  ziir  deittschen  Mythologie,  i.  p.  510.  For  the  custom  of  burning 
210;  Bavaria,  iii.  956.  a  tree  in  the  midsummer  bonfires,  see 

2  Panzer,  op.  cit.  ii.  549.  vol.  i.  p.  79. 


26o  MIDSUMMER  FIRES  chap. 

The  explanation  of  them  is  this.  About  midsummer, 
but  especially  on  Midsummer  Day,  two  such  holes  are 
bored  opposite  each  other,  into  which  the  extremities 
of  a  strong  pole  are  fixed.  The  holes  are  then  stuffed 
with  tow  steeped  in  resin  and  oil ;  a  rope  is  looped 
round  the  pole,  and  two  young  men,  who  must  be 
brothers  or  must  have  the  same  baptismal  name,  and 
must  be  of  the  same  age,  pull  the  ends  of  the  rope 
backwards  and  forwards  so  as  to  make  the  pole  revolve 
rapidly,  till  smoke  and  sparks  issue  from  the  two  holes 
in  the  door-posts.  The  sparks  are  caught  and  blown 
up  with  tinder,  and  this  is  the  new  and  pure  fire,  the 
appearance  of  which  is  greeted  with  cries  of  joy. 
Heaps  of  combustible  materials  are  now  ignited  with 
the  new  fire,  and  blazing  bundles  are  placed  on  boards 
and  sent  floating  down  the  brook.  The  boys  light 
torches  at  the  new  fire  and  run  to  fumigate  the  pas- 
tures. This  is  believed  to  drive  away  all  the  demons 
and  witches  that  molest  the  cattle.  Finally  the  torches 
are  thrown  in  a  heap  on  the  meadow  and  allowed  to 
burn  out.  On  their  way  back  the  boys  strew  the  ashes 
over  the  fields  :  this  is  supposed  to  make  them  fertile. 
I  f  a  farmer  has  taken  possession  of  a  new  house,  or  if  ser- 
vants have  changed  masters,  the  boys  fumigate  the  new 
abode  and  are  rewarded  by  the  farmer  with  a  supper.^ 
At  Konz,  on  the  Moselle,  the  midsummer  fire- 
festival  used  to  be  celebrated  as  follows.  A  quantity 
of  straw,  contributed  jointly  by  every  house,  was 
collected  on  the  top  of  the  Stromberg  Hill.  Here, 
towards  evening,  the  men  and  boys  assembled,  while 
the  women  and  girls  took  up  their  position  at  a  certain 
well  down  below.  On  the  top  of  the  hill  a  huge 
wheel  was  completely  covered  with  a  portion  of  the 

1  Rochholz,  Dcittscher  Glaiibe  tuid  Branch,  ii.  144  sqq. 


IV  MIDSUMMER  FIRES  261 

collected  straw,  the  remainder  of  which  was  made  into 
torches.  The  mayor  of  Sierk,  who  always  received  a 
basket  of  cherries  for  his  services,  gave  the  signal,  the 
wheel  was  ignited  with  a  torch,  and  sent  rolling  down 
the  hill  amid  shouts  of  joy.  All  the  men  and  boys 
swung  their  torches  in  the  air,  some  of  them  remained 
on  the  top  of  the  hill,  while  others  followed  the  fiery 
wheel  on  its  course  clown  the  hillside  to  the  Moselle. 
As  it  passed  the  women  and  girls  at  the  well  they  raised 
cries  of  joy  which  were  answered  by  the  men  on  the 
top  of  the  hill.  The  inhabitants  of  the  neighbouring 
villages  also  stood  on  the  banks  of  the  river  and  mingled 
their  voices  with  the  general  shout  of  jubilation.  The 
wheel  was  often  extinguished  before  it  reached  the 
water,  but  if  it  plunged  blazing  into  the  river  the  people 
expected  an  abundant  vintage,  and  the  inhabitants  of 
Konz  had  the  right  to  exact  a  waggon-load  of  white 
wine  from  the  surrounding  vineyards.^ 

In  France  the  midsummer  customs  are  similar.  In 
Poitou  a  wheel  enveloped  in  straw  is  set  on  fire,  and 
people  run  with  it  through  the  fields,  which  are  supposed 
to  be  fertilised  thereby  ;  also,  the  people  leap  thrice  over 
the  fire,  holding  in  their  hands  branches  of  nut-trees, 
which  are  afterwards  hung  over  the  door  of  the  cattle- 
stall.  At  Brest  torches  are  brandished,  and  hundreds  of 
them  flung  up  into  the  air  together."^  In  Britanny  mid- 
summer fires  blaze  on  the  hills,  the  people  dance  round 
them,  singing  and  leaping  over  the  glowing  embers. 
The  bonfire  is  made  by  piling  wood  round  a  pole 
which  is  surmounted  by  a  nosegay  or  crown.^ 

1  Grimm,  D.  M.^  i.  515  sq.;  B.  K.  ^  Sebillot,  Coiittimes popiilai)-es  de  la 
p.  510  sq.  Haute  Bretagne,  p.   193  sq.;  Wolf,  op. 

2  ^o\{,Beitrage zitr deiitschenJMytho-  tit.  ii.  392  sq. 
logic,  ii.  393;   Grimm,  D.  J/.*  i.  517; 

B.  AT.  p.  511. 


262  MIDSUMMER  FIRES  chap. 

Sometimes,  instead  of  rolling  fiery  wheels,  discs  of 
wood  are  ignited  in  the  midsummer  fires  and  thrown 
into  the  air  in  the  manner  already  described.^  At 
Edersleben,  near  Sangerhausen,  a  high  pole  was  planted 
in  the  ground  and  a  tar  barrel  was  hung  from  it  by  a 
chain  which  reached  to  the  ground.  The  barrel  was 
then  set  on  fire  and  swung  round  the  pole  amid  shouts 
of  joy. - 

In  our  own  country  the  custom  of  lighting  bonfires 
at  midsummer  has  prevailed  extensively.  In  the 
North  of  England  these  fires  used  to  be  lit  in  the  open 
streets.  Young  and  old  gathered  round  them  ;  the 
former  leaped  over  the  fires  and  engaged  in  games, 
while  the  old  people  looked  on.  Sometimes  the  fires 
were  kindled  on  the  tops  of  high  hills.  The  people  also 
carried  firebrands  about  the  fields."  In  Herefordshire 
and  Somersetshire  people  used  to  make  fires  in  the 
fields  on  Midsummer  Eve  "to  bless  the  apples."*  In 
Devonshire  the  custom  of  leaping  over  the  mid- 
summer fires  was  also  observed.""  In  Cornwall 
bonfires  were  lit  on  Midsummer  Eve  and  the  people 
marched  round  them  with  lighted  torches,  which  they 
also  carried  from  village  to  village.  On  Whiteborough, 
a  large  tumulus  near  Launceston,  a  huge  bonfire 
used  to  be  kindled  on  Midsummer  Eve  ;  a  tall  summer 
pole  with  a  large  bush  at  the  top  was  fixed  in  the 
centre  of  the  bonfire.*^  At  Darowen  in  Wales  small 
bonfires  were  lit  on   Midsummer  Eve."     On  the  same 


1  Zingerle,  Sit  ten,   etc.    des    Tiroler  sq.,    318,  cp.  pp.    305,    306,   308  sq.; 

Volkes,^  p.    159,    No.    1354;    Panzer,  B.  K.  p.  512. 

Beitrag,  i.  210 ;  i?.  A',  p.  511.  *  Aubrey,    Remaines   of    Gentilisme 

9T^i.  ci.        <.        HT    jj    ^    J  and  Iitdaisme,  p.  96,  cp.  id.  p.  26. 

^  Kuhn  u.    bcnwartz,    JVorddeiitsche  b  v.-     A      ti      t    '    -> 

Sasren,    Mdrchen    und    Geh'ciuche,    p.  a    tj     •'  "    '  o      "  t-v 

■^     '  '    ^  <^  Id.     1.     303,     318,     319;      Dyer, 

British  Popular  Custo??is,  p.  315. 


390;  B.  K.  511. 

3  Brand,  Popular  Antiquities,  i.  300  "  Brand,  op.  cit.  i.  318. 


IV  MIDSUMMER  FIRES  263 

day  people  in  the  Isle  of  Man  used  to  light  fires  to  the 
windward  of  every  field,  so  that  the  smoke  might  pass 
over  the  corn  ;  and  they  folded  their  cattle  and  carried 
blazing  furze  or  gorse  round  them  several  times.^ 

In  Ireland,  "on  the  Eves  of  St.  John  Baptist 
and  St.  Peter,  they  always  have  in  every  town  a 
bonfire  late  in  the  evening,  and  carry  about  bundles 
of  reeds  fast  tied  and  fired  ;  these  being  dry,  will 
last  long,  and  flame  better  than  a  torch,  and  be  a 
pleasing  divertive  prospect  to  the  distant  beholder  ; 
a  stranger  would  go  near  to  imagine  the  whole  country 
was  on  fire."^  Another  writer  says  of  the  South  of 
Ireland  :  "  On  Midsummer's  Eve,  every  eminence, 
near  which  is  a  habitation,  blazes  with  bonfires ;  and 
round  these  they  carry  numerous  torches,  shouting  and 
dancing."^  An  author  who  described  Ireland  in  the 
first  quarter  of  last  century  says  :  "  On  the  vigil  of  St. 
John  the  Baptist's  nativity,  they  make  bonfires,  and 
run  along  the  streets  and  fields  with  wisps  of  straw 
blazing  on  long  poles  to  purify  the  air,  which  they 
think  infectious  by  believing  all  the  devils,  spirits, 
ghosts,  and  hobgoblins  fly  abroad  this  night  to  hurt 
mankind."  *  Another  writer  states  that  he  witnessed 
the  festival  in  Ireland  in  1782  :  "  Exactly  at  midnight 
the  fires  began  to  appear,  and  taking  advantage  of 
going  up  to  the  leads  of  the  house,  which  had  a  widely 
extended  view,  I  saw  on  a  radius  of  thirty  miles,  all 
around,  the  fires  burning  on  every  eminence  which  the 
country  afforded.  I  had  a  further  satisfaction  in  learn- 
ing, from  undoubted  authority,  that  the  people  daitced 

1  J.    Train,    Accomit  of  the   Isle  of  ^  Brand,  I.e.,  quoting  the  author  of 
Alan    ii.   1 20.                                                     the  Survey  of  the  South  of  Ireland. 

'^  Brand,  i.  305,  quoting  the  author 

2  Brand,  i.  303,  quoting  Sir  Henry      of    the    Comieal  Pilgrwi's  Pilgrimage 
Piers's  Description  of  Westmeath.  into  Irela^id. 


264  MIDSUMMER  FIRES  chap. 

rotind  the  fires,  and  at  the  close  went  through  these 
fires,  and  made  their  sons  and  daughters,  together  with 
their  cattle,  pass  through  the  fire  ;  and  the  whole  was 
conducted  with  religious  solemnity."  ^  That  the  custom 
prevailed  in  fiill  force  as  late  as  1867  appears  from  a 
notice  in  the  Liverpool  Mercury,  29th  June  1867,  which 
runs  thus  :  "The  old  pagan  fire-worship  still  survives 
in  Ireland,  though  nominally  in  honour  of  St.  John. 
On  Sunday  night  bonfires  were  observed  throughout 
nearly  every  county  in  the  province  of  Leinster.  In 
Kilkenny  fires  blazed  on  every  hillside  at  intervals  of 
about  a  mile.  There  were  very  many  in  the  Queen's 
county,  also  in  Kildare  and  Wexford.  The  efiect  in 
the  rich  sunset  appeared  to  travellers  very  grand. 
The  people  assemble  and  dance  round  the  fires,  the 
children  jump  through  the  flames,  and  in  former  times 
live  coals  were  carried  into  the  corn-fields  to  prevent 
blight."  2 

In  Scotland  the  traces  of  midsummer  fires  are 
few.  In  reference  to  the  parish  of  Mongahitter  it  is 
said:  "The  Midsummer  Eve  fire,  a  relic  of  Druidism, 
was  kindled  in  some  parts  of  this  country."^  Moresin 
states  that  on  St.  Peter's  Day  (29th  June)  the  Scotch 
ran  about  with  lighted  torches  on  mountains  and  high 
grounds  ;  ^  and  at  Loudon  in  Ayrshire  it  appears  that 
down  to  the  close  of  last  century  the  custom  still  pre- 
vailed for  herdsmen  and  young  people  to  kindle  fires 
on  high  grounds  on  St.  Peter's  Day.^  In  the  Perth- 
shire Highlands  on  Midsummer  Day  the  cowherd  used 
to   go   three  times   round   the  fold,    according  to   the 

1  Brand,  i.  304,  quoting  The  Gentle-  ^  Brand,  i.   311,  quoting  Statistical 

man's    Magazine,    February    1795,   p.      Accojiiit  of  Scotland,  w\.   145. 

-  Quoted  by  Dyer,  British  Popular  '     '  i^'  ^ 

Customs,  p.  321  sq.  '"  Brand,  i.  337. 


IV  MIDSUMMER  FIRES  265 

course  of  the  sun,  with  a  burning-  torch  in  his  hand. 
This  was  beheved  to  purify  the  flocks  and  herds  and 
prevent  diseases.^ 

In  Slavonic  countries  also  the  midsummer  festival 
is  celebrated  with  similar  rites.  In  Russia  fires  are 
lighted  and  young  people,  crowned  with  flowers,  jump 
through  them  and  drive  their  cattle  through  them.  In 
Little  Russia  a  stake  is  driven  into  the  ground  on  St. 
John's  Night,  wrapt  in  straw,  and  set  on  fire.  As  the 
flames  rise  the  peasant  women  throw  birch-tree  boughs 
into  them,  saying,  "  May  my  flax  be  as  tall  as  this 
bough  !  "  -  "In  Ruthenia  the  bonfires  are  lighted  by 
a  flame  procured  from  wood  by  friction,  the  operation 
being  performed  by  the  elders  of  the  party,  amid  the 
respectful  silence  of  the  rest.  But  as  soon  as  the  fire 
is  'churned,'  the  bystanders  break  forth  with  joyous 
songs,  and  when  the  bonfires  are  lit  the  young  people 
take  hands,  and  spring  in  couples  through  the  smoke, 
if  not  through  the  flames,  and  after  that  the  cattle  in 
their  turn  are  driven  through  it."  ^  In  many  parts  of 
Prussia  and  Lithuania  great  fires  are  kindled  on  the 
Eve  of  St.  John  (Midsummer  Eve).  All  the  heights 
are  ablaze  with  them,  as  far  as  the  eye  can  see.  The 
fires  are  supposed  to  be  a  protection  against  thunder, 
hail,  and  cattle  disease,  especially  if  next  morning  the 
cattle  are  driven  over  the  places  where  the  fires 
burned.^  In  some  parts  of  Masuren  it  is  the  custom 
on  the  evening  of  Midsummer  Day  to  put  out  all  the 
fires  in  the  village.  Then  an  oaken  stake  is  driven 
into  the  ground,  a  wheel  is  fixed  on  it  as  on  an  axle 

1  J.  Ramsay  and  A.  Allardyce,  Scot-  ^  Ralston.  I.e. 

land   and  Scotsmen  in  the  Eighteenth  ■*  Tettau    und    Temme,   Die    Volks- 

Centioy,  ii.  436.  sagen     Ostpreussens,     Litthaziens    und 

2  Ralston,     Songs    of    the    Russian  Westprcussens,^^.  2-]-] ;  (^xxxava,  D.  M.^ 
People,  Y>.  240;  Grimm,  D.  MM.  519.  i.  519- 


266  MIDSUMMER  FIRES  chap. 

and  is  made  to  revolve  rapidly,  till  the  friction  produces 
fire.  Every  one  takes  home  a  light  from  the  new 
fire  and  rekindles  the  fire  on  the  domestic  hearth.^ 
In  Bohemia  the  cows  used  to  be  driven  over  the 
midsummer  fires  to  protect  them  from  witchcraft." 
In  Servia  on  Midsummer  Eve  herdsmen  light  torches 
of  birch  bark  and  march  round  the  sheepfolds  and 
cattle-stalls  ;  then  they  climb  the  hills  and  there  allow 
the  torches  to  burn  out.^ 

In  Greece  the  women  light  fires  on  St,  John's  Eve 
and  jump  over  them  crying,  "I  leave  my  sins  behind 
me."*  Italy  must  also  have  had  its  midsummer  bon- 
fires, since  at  Orvieto  they  were  specially  excepted 
from  the  prohibition  directed  against  bonfires  in 
general. °  We  have  seen  that  they  are  still  lighted  in 
Sardinia.*^  In  Corsica  on  the  Eve  of  St.  John  the 
people  set  fire  to  the  trunk  of  a  tree  or  to  a  whole 
tree,  and  the  young  men  and  maidens  dance  round  the 
blaze,  which  is  called  fticaraja?  Midsummer  fires 
are,  or  were  formerly,  lighted  in  Spain.^  Even  the 
Mohammedans  of  Algeria  and  Morocco  are  reported 
to  have  kindled  great  midsummer  bonfires  of  straw, 
into  which  they  kept  throwing  incense  and  spices 
the  whole  night,  invoking  the  divine  blessing  on  their 
fruit-trees.^ 

It  remains  to  show  that  the  burning  of  efifigies 
of  human  beings  in  the  midsummer  fires  was  not 
uncommon.     At    Rottenburg    in    Wurtemberg,    down 

1  T'6^'^en,Al>e}'glatibenajisMasiirei!,-  ''   Gnheinatis,  Myi/io/ogz'e  des  F/atites, 
p.  71.  i.  1S5. 

2  Grimm,    I.e.;    Reinsberg-Diiiings-  *  Bra.x\d,  Popular  Antiquities,!.  2,17  ; 
feld,  Fest-Kalendcr  aits  Bdhmeu,Y>-  307,  Grimm,  I.e. 

note.  ^  G.   Ferraro,    Superstizioni,    iisi   e 

^  Grimm,  I.e.            ^  Grimm,  I.e.  p)-overhi  Monfei-rini,^.  34  ^ry. ,  referring 

^  Grimm,  D.  J\I.^  i.  51S.  to  Alvise  da  Cadamosto,  Relazion  del 

^  Above,  vol.  i.  p.  291.  viaggi  d\4frica,  in  Ramusio. 


IV  MIDSUMMER  FIRES  267 

to  the  beginning  of  the  present  century,  a  ceremony 
was  observed  on  Midsummer  Day  which  was  called 
"beheading  the  angel-man."  A  stump  was  driven 
into  the  ground,  wrapt  with  straw,  and  fashioned  into 
the  rude  likeness  of  a  human  figure,  with  arms,  head, 
and  face.  This  was  the  angel-man  ;  round  about  him 
wood  was  piled  up.  The  boys,  armed  with  swords, 
assembled  in  crowds,  covered  the  figure  completely 
over  with  flowers,  and  eagerly  awaited  the  signal. 
When  the  pile  of  wood  was  fired  and  the  angel -man 
burst  into  a  blaze,  the  word  was  given  and  all  the  boys 
fell  upon  him  with  their  swords  and  hewed  the  burning 
figure  in  pieces.  Then  they  leaped  backwards  and 
forwards  over  the  fire.^  In  some  parts  of  the  Tyrol  a 
straw-man  is  carted  about  the  village  on  Midsummer 
Day  and  then  burned.  He  is  called  the  Lotter,  which 
has  been  corrupted  into  Luther.^  In  French  Flanders 
down  to  1789  a  straw  figure  representing  a  man  was 
always  burned  in  the  midsummer  bonfire,  and  the 
figure  of  a  woman  was  burned  on  St.  Peter's  Day,  29th 
June.^  At  Gratz  on  the  23d  June  the  common  people 
used  to  make  a  puppet  called  the  Tatermann,  which 
they  dragged  to  the  bleaching-ground,  and  pelted  with 
burning  besoms  till  it  took  fire.*  In  some  parts  of 
Russia  a  figure  of  Kupalo  is  burned  or  thrown  into 
a  stream  on  St.  John's  Night.^  The  Russian  custom 
of  carrying  the  straw  effigy  of  Kupalo  over  the  mid- 
summer bonfire  has  been  already  described." 

The  best  general   explanation  of  these  European 


1  Birlinger,       Volksthiiinliches      aiis  ^  Wolf,   Beitriige  ziir  deutschen  My- 
Sckwaben,  ii.    lOO  sq.;  B.   K.   p.    513  thologie,  ii.  392;  B.  K.  p.  513. 

sq.  *  B.  K.  p.  513. 

2  Zingerle,  Sittcn,  etc.,  des   Tiroler  ^  Ralston,     Songs    of   the    Russian 
Volkes,^  p.    159,    No.    1353,   cp.    No.  People,  p.  240. 

1355  ;  ^.  A^  p.  513.  ^  Above,  vol.  i.  p.  272  sq. 


268  FIRES  AS  chap. 

fire-festivals  seems  to  be  the  one  given  by  Mannhardt, 
namely,  that  they  are  sun-charms  or  magical  ceremonies 
intended  to  ensure  a  proper  supply  of  sunshine  for 
men,  animals,  and  plants.  We  have  seen  that  savages 
resort  to  charms  for  making  sunshine,^  and  we  need 
not  wonder  that  primitive  man  in  Europe  has  done 
the  same.  Indeed,  considering  the  cold  and  cloudy 
climate  of  Europe  during  a  considerable  part  of  the 
year,  it  is  natural  that  sun-charms  should  have  played 
a  much  more  prominent  part  among  the  superstitious 
practices  of  European  peoples  than  among  those  of 
savages  who  live  nearer  the  equator.  This  view  of 
the  festivals  in  question  is  supported  by  various  con- 
siderations drawn  partly  from  the  rites  themselves, 
partly  from  the  influence  which  they  are  believed  to 
exert  upon  the  weather  and  on  vegetation.  For 
example,  the  custom  of  rolling  a  burning  wheel  down 
a  hillside,  which  is  often  observed  on  these  occasions, 
seems  a  very  natural  imitation  of  the  sun's  course  in 
the  sky,  and  the  imitation  is  especially  appropriate 
on  Midsummer  Day  when  the  sun's  annual  declension 
begins.  Not  less  graphic  is  the  imitation  of  his 
apparent  revolution  by  swinging  a  burning  tar-barrel 
round  a  pole."  The  custom  of  throwing  blazing  discs, 
shaped  like  suns,  into  the  air  is  probably  also  a  piece 
of  imitative  magic.  In  these,  as  in  so  many  cases,  the 
magic  force  is  supposed  to  take  effect  through  mimicry 
or  sympathy ;  by  imitating  the  desired  result  you 
actually  produce  it ;  by  counterfeiting  the  sun's  pro- 
gress through  the  heavens  you  really  help  the  luminary 
to  pursue  his  celestial  journey  with  punctuality  and 
despatch.     The  name  "  fire  of  heaven,"  by  which  the 

1  Above,  vol.  i.  p.  22  sqq.  -  Above,  p.  262. 


SUN-CHARMS  269 


midsummer  fire  is  sometimes  popularly  known, ^  clearly 
indicates  a  consciousness  of  the  connection  between 
the  earthly  and  the  heavenly  flame. 

Again,  the  manner  in  which  the  fire  appears  to  have 
been  originally  kindled  on  these  occasions  favours  the 
view  that  it  was  intended  to  be  a  mock-sun.  For,  as 
various  scholars  have  seen,-  it  is  highly  probable  that 
originally  at  these  festivals  fire  was  universally  obtained 
by  the  friction  of  two  pieces  of  wood.  We  have  seen 
that  this  is  still  the  case  in  some  places  both  at  the 
Easter  and  midsummer  fires,  and  that  it  is  expressly 
stated  to  have  been  formerly  the  case  at  the  Beltane 
fires.^  But  what  makes  it  almost  certain  that  this  was 
once  the  invariable  mode  of  kindling  the  fire  at  these 
periodic  festivals  is  the  analogy  of  the  need -fires. 
Need-fires  are  kindled,  not  at  fixed  periods,  but  on 
occasions  of  special  distress,  particularly  at  the  out- 
break of  a  murrain,  and  the  cattle  are  driven  through 
the  need-fire,  just  as  they  are  sometimes  driven  through 
the  midsummer  fires.*  Now,  the  need-fire  has  always 
been  produced  by  the  friction  of  wood  and  sometimes 
by  the  revolution  of  a  wheel;  in  Mull,  for  example,  it 
was  made  by  turning  an  oaken  wheel  over  nine  oaken 
spindles  from  east  to  west,  that  is,  in  the  direction  of 
the  sun.  It  is  a  plausible  conjecture  that  the  wheel 
employed  to  produce  the  need-fire  represents  the  sun  ;  '^ 
and  if  the  spring  and  midsummer  fires  were  originally 
produced  in  the  same  way,  it  would  be  a  confirmation 

1  Birlinger,       Volksthiimliches      aiis  ^  On    the    need -fires,    see    Grimm, 

Sch'waben,\\.  57,   97;   B.   K.   p.  510;  D.    J\L    i.    501    sqq.;  Wolf,   oJ>.  cit.    i. 

cp.  Panzer,  Beitrag,\\.  240.  116   sq.,    ii.  378  sqq.;    Kuhn,   op.   cit. 

-  Cp.  Grimm,/).  M.^  \.  521;  Wolf,  p.  41  sqq.;  B.  K.  p.   518  sqq.;   Elton, 

Bcitriige  zur  deittschen  Mytkologie,   ii.  Origins  of  English  History,  p.  293  sq.; 

389  ;     Ad.      Kuhn,      Herabhiuft     des  Jahn,     Die    dentsche7i     Opfergebnittche 

Feners,'^  -p^.  41  sq.,  47;  W.  Mannhardt,  l>ei  Acker-bazi  iind  Viehziicht,  p.  26  sqq. 

B.  K.  p.  521.  °  This  is  the  view  of  Grimm,  Wolf, 

•^  See  above,  pp.  254,  255,  260,  265.  Kuhn,  and  Mannhardt. 


2/0  FIRES  AS  CHAP. 

of  the  view  that  they  were  originally  sun-charms.  In 
point  of  fact  there  is,  as  Kuhn  has  pointed  out/  some 
evidence  to  show  that  the  midsummer  fire  was 
originally  thus  produced.  For  at  Obermedlingen  in 
Swabia  the  "fire  of  heaven,"  as  it  was  called,  was 
made  on  St.  Vitus's  Day  (15th  June)  by  igniting  a 
cart-wheel,  which,  smeared  with  pitch  and  plaited  with 
straw,  was  fastened  on  a  pole  twelve  feet  high,  the  top 
of  the  pole  being  inserted  in  the  nave  of  the  wheel. 
This  fire  was  made  on  the  summit  of  the  mountain, 
and  as  the  flame  ascended,  the  people  uttered  a  set 
form  of  words,  with  eyes  and  arms  directed  heaven- 
ward.^ Here  the  fact  of  a  wheel  beino-  fixed  on  the 
top  of  a  pole  and  ignited  makes  it  probable  that 
originally  the  fire  was  produced,  as  in  the  need-fire,  by 
the  revolution  of  a  wheel.  The  day  on  which  the 
ceremony  takes  place  (15th  June)  is  near  midsummer  ; 
and  we  have  seen  that  in  Masuren  fire  is  (or  was) 
actually  made  on  Midsummer  Day  by  turning  a  wheel 
rapidly  about  an  oaken  pole,  though  it  is  not  said  that 
the  new  fire  so  produced  is  used  to  light  a  bonfire. 

Once  more,  the  influence  which  these  bonfires  are 
supposed  to  exert  on  the  weather  and  on  vegetation, 
goes  to  show  that  they  are  sun -charms,  since  the 
effects  ascribed  to  them  are  identical  with  those  of 
sunshine.  Thus,  in  Sweden  the  warmth  or  cold  of 
the  coming  season  is  inferred  from  the  direction  in 
which  the  fiames  of  the  bonfire  are  blown  ;  if  they 
blow  to  the  south,  it  will  be  warm,  if  to  the  north, 
cold.  No  doubt  at  present  the  direction  of  the  fiames 
is  regarded  merely  as  an  augury  of  the  weather,  not  as 
a  mode  of  influencing  it.  But  we  may  be  pretty  sure 
that    this    is  one    of  the    cases    in   which    mapfic    has 

1  Herabkunft  des  Fciiers,-  p.  47.  ^  Panzer,  Beitrag,  ii.  240. 


SUN-CHARMS  271 


dwindled  into  divination.  So  in  the  Eifel  Mountains, 
when  the  smoke  blows  towards  the  corn-fields,  this 
is  an  omen  that  the  harvest  will  be  abundant.  But 
doubtless  the  older  view  was,  not  merely  that  the 
smoke  and  flames  prognosticated,  but  that  they  actually 
produced  an  abundant  harvest,  the  heat  of  the  flames 
acting  like  sunshine  on  the  corn.  Indeed,  this  older 
view  must  still  have  been  held  by  people  in  the  Isle  of 
Man  when  they  lit  fires  to  windward  of  their  fields  in 
order  that  the  smoke  might  blow  over  them.  Again, 
the  idea  that  the  corn  will  grow  well  as  far  as  the 
blaze  of  the  bonfire  is  visible,  is  certainly  a  remnant  of 
the  belief  in  the  quickening  and  fertilising  power  of 
the  bonfires.  The  same  belief  reappears  in  the  notion 
that  embers  taken  from  the  bonfires  and  inserted  in 
the  fields  will  promote  the  growth  of  the  crops,  and 
again  it  plainly  underlies  the  custom  of  mixing  the  ashes 
of  the  bonfire  with  the  seed-corn  at  sowing,  or  of  scatter- 
ing the  ashes  by  themselves  over  the  field.  The  belief 
that  the  flax  will  grow  as  high  as  the  people  leap  over 
the  bonfire  belongs  clearly  to  the  same  class  of  ideas. 
Once  more,  we  saw  that  at  Konz,  on  the  banks  of  the 
Moselle,  if  the  blazing  wheel  which  was  trundled  down 
the  hillside  reached  the  river  without  being  extinguished, 
this  was  hailed  as  a  proof  that  the  vintage  would  be 
abundant.  So  firmly  was  this  belief  held  that  the 
successful  performance  of  the  ceremony  entitled  the 
villagers  to  levy  a  tax  upon  the  owners  of  the  neio-h- 
bouring  vineyards.  Here  the  unextinguished  wheel 
meant  an  unclouded  sun,  and  this  in  turn  meant  an 
abundant  vintage.  So  the  waggon-load  of  white  wine 
which  the  villagers  received  from  the  vineyards  round 
about  was  in  fact  a  payment  for  the  sunshine  which 
they  had  procured  for  the  grapes. 


272  FIRES  AS  CHAP. 

The  interpretation  of  these  fire-customs  as  charms 
for  making  sunshine  is  confirmed  by  a  parallel  custom 
observed  by  the  Hindoos  of  Southern  India  at  the 
Pongol  or  Feast  of  Ingathering.  The  festival  is  cele- 
brated in  the  early  part  of  January,  when,  according 
to  Hindoo  astrologers,  the  sun  enters  the  tropic  of 
Capricorn,  and  the  chief  event  of  the  festival  coin- 
cides with  the  passage  of  the  sun.  For  some  days 
previously  the  boys  gather  heaps  of  sticks,  straw, 
dead  leaves,  and  everything  that  will  burn.  On  the 
morning  of  the  first  day  of  the  festival  the  heaps 
are  fired.  Every  street  and  lane  has  its  bonfire. 
The  young  folk  leap  over  the  fire  or  pile  on  fresh 
fuel.  This  fire  is  an  offering  to  Siirya,  the  sun-god, 
or  to  Agni,  the  deity  of  fire;  it  "wakes  him  from  his 
sleep,  calling  on  him  again  to  gladden  the  earth  with 
his  light  and  heat."^  To  say  that  the  fires  awaken 
the  sun -god  from  his  sleep  is  only  a  metaphorical 
and  perhaps  modernised  expression  of  the  belief  that 
they  actually  help  to  rekindle  the  sun's  light  and  heat. 

The  custom  of  leaping  over  the  fire  and  driving 
cattle  through  it  may  be  intended,  on  the  one  hand, 
to  secure  for  man  and  beast  a  share  of  the  vital 
energy  of  the  sun,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  to  purify 
them  from  all  evil  influences ;  for  to  the  primitive 
mind  fire  is  the  most  powerful  of  all  purificatory 
agents.  The  latter  idea  is  obviously  uppermost  in 
the  minds  of  Greek  women  when  they  leap  over  the 
midsummer  fire,  saying,  "  I  leave  my  sins  behind 
me."  So  in  Yucatan  at  a  New  Year's  festival 
the  people  used  to  light  a  huge  bonfire  and  pass 
through   it,  in   the   belief  that   this  was    a  means   of 

1  Ch.     E.     Cover,     "The     Pongol      Jioyal  Asiatic  Society,  U.S.   v.    (1870) 
festival    in    Southern    India,"  Journ.      p.  96  sq. 


SUN-CHARMS  273 


riddino-  themselves  of  their  troubles.^  The  custom 
of  driving  cattle  through  a  fire  is  not  confined  to 
Europe.  At  certain  times  the  Hottentots  make  a 
fire  of  chips,  dry  branches,  and  green  twigs,  so  as  to 
raise  a  great  smoke.  Through  this  fire  they  drive 
their  sheep,  dragging  them  through  by  force,  if 
necessary.  If  the  sheep  make  their  escape  without 
passing  through  the  fire,  it  is  reckoned  a  heavy 
disgrace  and  a  very  bad  omen.  But  if  they  pass 
readily  through  or  over  the  fire,  the  joy  of  the 
Hottentots  is  indescribable.^ 

The  procession  or  race  with  burning  torches, 
which  so  often  forms  a  part  of  these  fire  -  festivals, 
appears  to  be  simply  a  means  of  diffusing  far  and 
wide  the  genial  influence  of  the  bonfire  or  of  the  sun- 
shine which  it  represents.  Hence  on  these  occasions 
lighted  torches  are  very  frequently  carried  over  the 
fields,  sometimes  with  the  avowed  intention  of  fer- 
tilising them  ;  ^  and  with  the  same  intention  live  coals 
from  the  bonfire  are  sometimes  placed  in  the  field 
"to  prevent  blight."  The  custom  of  trundling  a 
burning  wheel  over  the  fields,  which  is  practised  for 
the  express  purpose  of  fertilising  them,  embodies 
the  same  idea  in  a  still  more  graphic  form  ;  since 
in  this  way  the  mock-sun  itself,  not  merely  its  light 
and  heat  represented  by  torches,  is  made  actually  to 
pass  over  the  ground  which  is  to  receive  its  quicken- 
ing and  kindly  influence.  Again,  the  custom  of 
carrying   lighted   brands    round   the  cattle    is  plainly 


^  Diego     de    Landa,    Relation    des  on  the  monuments,  are  perhaps  to  be 

choses  de  Yucatan  (Paris,  1864),  p.  233.  explained  by  this  custom.      To  regard, 

^  Kolben,  Present  State  of  the  Cape  with  Mannhardt  {B.    K.   p.    536),   the 

of  Good  Hope,  i.   \2<^  sqq.  torches   in  the  modern   European  cus- 

^   P.  253.     The  torches  of  Demeter,  toms  as  imitations  of  lightning  seems 

which  figure  so  largely  in  her  myth  and  unnecessary. 

VOL.   II  T 


!74  TREE-SPIRIT 


equivalent  to  driving  the  animals  through  the  fire. 
It  is  quite  possible  that  in  these  customs  the  idea 
of  the  quickening  pov^er  of  fire  may  be  combined 
v^ith  the  conception  of  it  as  a  purgative  agent  for  the 
expulsion  or  destruction  of  evil  beings.  It  is  cer- 
tainly sometimes  interpreted  in  the  latter  way  by 
persons  who  practise  the  customs  ;  and  this  purgative 
use  of  fire  comes  out  very  prominently,  as  we  have 
seen,  in  the  general  expulsion  of  demons  from  towns 
and  villages.  But  in  the  present  class  of  cases  this 
aspect  of  it  is  perhaps  secondary,  if  indeed  it  is  more 
than  a  later  misinterpretation  of  the  custom. 

It  remains  to  ask,  What  is  the  meaning  of  burning 
an  effigy  in  these  bonfires  ?  The  effigies  so  burned, 
as  was  remarked  above,  can  hardly  be  separated  from 
the  effigies  of  Death  which  are  burned  or  otherwise 
destroyed  in  spring  ;  and  grounds  have  been  already 
given  for  regarding  the  so-called  effigies  of  Death 
as  really  representations  of  the  tree-spirit  or  spirit  of 
vegetation.  Are  the  other  effigies,  which  are  burned 
in  the  spring  and  midsummer  bonfires,  susceptible  of 
the  same  explanation?  It  would  seem  so.  For  just 
as  the  fragments  of  the  so-called  Death  are  stuck  in 
the  fields  to  make  the  crops  grow,  so  the  charred 
embers  of  the  figure  burned  in  the  spring  bonfires 
are  sometimes  placed  in  the  fields  in  the  belief  that 
they  will  keep  vermin  from  the  crop.  Again,  the 
rule  that  the  last  married  bride  must  leap  over  the 
fire  in  which  the  straw -man  is  burned  on  Shrove 
Tuesday,  is  probably  intended  to  make  her  fruitful. 
But,  as  we  have  seen,  the  power  of  blessing  women 
with  offspring  is  a  special  attribute  of  tree-spirits;^ 
it   is   therefore   a   fair   presumption    that    the    burning 

1   Above,  vol.  i.  p.  70  sqq. 


B  URNT  IN  EFFIG  V  27  5 


effigy  over  which  the  bride  must  leap  is  a  repre- 
sentative of  the  fertihsing  tree-spirit  or  spirit  of 
vegetation.  This  character  of  the  effigy,  as  repre- 
sentative of  the  spirit  of  vegetation,  is  almost  unmis- 
takable when  the  effigy  is  composed  of  an  unthreshed 
sheaf  of  corn  or  is  covered  from  head  to  foot  with 
flowers.^  Aofain,  it  is  to  be  noted  that  instead  of  an 
effigy  living  trees  are  sometimes  burned  both  in  the 
spring  and  midsummer  bonfires."  Now,  considering 
the  frequency  with  which  the  tree-spirit  is  represented 
in  human  shape,  it  is  hardly  rash  to  suppose  that 
when  sometimes  a  tree  and  sometimes  an  effigy  is 
burned  in  these  fires,  the  effigy  and  the  tree  are 
regarded  as  equivalent  to  each  other,  each  being  a 
representative  of  the  tree-spirit.  This,  again,  is  con- 
firmed by  observing,  first,  that  sometimes  the  effigy 
which  is' to  be  burned  is  carried  about  simultaneously 
with  a  May-tree,  the  former  being  carried  by  the  boys, 
the  latter  by  the  girls  ;^  and,  second,  that  the  effigy 
is  sometimes  tied  to  a  living  tree  and  burned  with 
it.^  In  these  cases,  we  can  scarcely  doubt,  the  tree- 
spirit  is  represented,  as  we  have  found  it  represented 
before,  in  duplicate,  both  by  the  tree  and  by  the 
effigy.  That  the  true  character  of  the  effigy  as  a 
representative  of  the  beneficent  spirit  of  vegetation 
should  sometimes  be  forgotten,  is  natural.  The  cus- 
tom of  burning  a  beneficent  god  is  too  foreign  to 
later  modes  of  thought  to  escape  misinterpretation. 
Naturally  enough  the  people  who  continued  to  burn  his 
image  came  in  time  to  identify  it  as  the  effigy  of  per- 
sons, whom,  on  various  grounds,  they  considered  objec- 
tionable, such  as  Judas  Iscariot,  Luther,  and  a  witch. 

The    general     reasons    for    killing    a    god    or    his 
1  Pp.  250,  267.    2  Pp.  247,  248,  253,  259,  266.   3  p.  250  j-(/.    ^  Pp.  247, 24S. 


276  TREE-SPIRIT  BURNT  chap. 

representative  have  been  examined  in  the  preceding 
chapter.  But  when  the  god  happens  to  be  a  deity 
of  vegetation,  there  are  special  reasons  why  he  should 
die  by  fire.  For  light  and  heat  are  necessary  to 
vegetable  growth  ;  and,  on  the  principle  of  sympathetic 
magic,  by  subjecting  the  personal  representative  of 
vegetation  to  their  influence,  you  secure  a  supply  of 
these  necessaries  for  trees  and  crops.  In  other  words, 
by  burning  the  spirit  of  vegetation  in  a  fire  which 
represents  the  sun,  you  make  sure  that,  for  a  time 
at  least,  vegetation  shall  have  plenty  of  sun.  It 
may  be  objected  that,  if  the  intention  is  simply  to 
secure  enough  sunshine  for  vegetation,  this  end  would 
be  better  attained,  on  the  principles  of  sympathetic 
magic,  by  merely  passing  the  representative  of  vege- 
tation through  the  fire  instead  of  burning  him.  In 
point  of  fact  this  is  sometimes  done.  In  Russia,  as 
we  have  seen,  the  straw  figure  of  Kupalo  is  not 
burned  in  the  midsummer  fire,  but  merely  carried 
backwards  and  forwards  across  it.^  But,  for  the  reasons 
already  given,  it  is  necessary  that  the  god  should 
die  ;  so  next  day  Kupalo  is  stripped  of  her  ornaments 
and  thrown  into  a  stream.  In  this  Russian  custom, 
therefore,  the  passage  of  the  image  through  the  fire  is 
a  sun -charm  pure  and  simple  ;  the  killing  of  the  god 
is  a  separate  act,  and  the  mode  of  killing  him — 
by  drowning — is  probably  a  rain -charm.  But  usually 
people  have  not  thought  it  necessary  to  draw  this  fine 
distinction  ;  for  the  various  reasons  already  assigned, 
it  is  advantageous,  they  think,  to  expose  the  god  of 
vegetation  to  a  considerable  degree  of  heat,  and  it  is 
also  advantageous  to  kill  him,  and  they  combine  these 
advantages  in  a  rough-and-ready  way  by  burning  him. 

1  Vol.  i.  p.  272. 


TREE-SPIRIT  BURNT  277 


Finally,  we  have  to  ask,  were  human  beings 
formerly  burned  as  representatives  of  the  tree- spirit 
or  deity  of  vegetation  ?  We  have  seen  reasons  for 
believing  that  living  persons  have  often  acted  as 
representatives  of  the  tree -spirit,  and  have  suffered 
death  as  such.  There  is  no  reason,  therefore,  why 
they  should  not  have  been  burned,  if  any  special 
advantages  were  likely  to  be  attained  by  putting 
them  to  death  in  that  way.  The  consideration  of 
human  suffering  is  not  one  which  enters  into  the 
calculations  of  primitive  man.  It  would  have  been 
surprising  if  it  did,  when  we  remember  the  record 
of  Christian  Europe.  Now,  in  the  fire-festivals  which 
we  are  discussing,  the  pretence  of  burning  people  is 
sometimes  carried  so  far  that  it  seems  reasonable  to 
regard  it  as  a  mitigated  survival  of  an  older  custom 
of  actually  burning  them.  Thus  in  Aachen,  as  we 
saw,  the  man  clad  in  peas -straw  acts  so  cleverly 
that  the  children  really  believe  he  is  being  burned. 
And  at  the  Beltane  fires  the  pretended  victim  was 
seized,  and  a  show  made  of  throwing  him  into  the 
fire,  and  for  some  time  afterwards  people  affected  to 
speak  of  him  as  dead.  In  the  following  customs 
Mannhardt  is  probably  right  in  recognising  traces  of 
an  old  custom  of  burning  a  leaf-clad  representative  of 
the  spirit  of  vegetation.  At  Wolfeck,  in  Austria,  on 
Midsummer  Day,  a  boy  completely  clad  in  green  fir 
branches  goes  from  house  to  house,  accompanied  by  a 
noisy  crew,  collecting  wood  for  the  bonfire.  As  he 
gets  the  wood  he  sings — 

"  Forest  trees  I  want. 
No  sour  milk  for  me. 
But  beer  and  wine, 
So  can  the  wood-man  be  jolly  and  gay.'"^ 

1  B.  K.  p.  524. 


278  BURNT  SACRIFICES  chap. 

In  some  parts  of  Bavaria,  also,  the  boys  who  go 
from  house  to  house  collecting  fuel  for  the  midsummer 
bonfire  envelop  one  of  their  number  from  head  to 
foot  in  green  branches  of  firs,  and  lead  him  by  a  rope 
through  the  whole  village/  At  Moosheim,  in 
Wlirtemberg,  the  festival  of  St.  John's  Fire  usually 
lasted  for  fourteen  days,  ending  on  the  second  Sunday 
after  Midsummer  Day.  On  this  last  day  the  bonfire 
was  left  in  charge  of  the  children,  while  the  older 
people  retired  to  a  wood.  Here  they  encased  a 
young  fellow  in  leaves  and  twigs,  who,  thus  disguised, 
went  to  the  fire,  scattered  it,  and  trod  it  out.  All  the 
people  present  fled  at  the  sight  of  him.' 

But  it  seems  possible  to  go  farther  than  this.  Of 
human  sacrifices  offered  on  these  occasions  the  most 
unequivocal  traces,  as  we  have  seen,  are  those  which, 
about  a  hundred  years  ago,  still  lingered  at  the  Beltane 
fires  in  the  Highlands  of  Scotland,  that  is,  among  a 
Celtic  people  who,  situated  in  a  remote  corner  of 
Europe,  enjoying  practical  independence,  and  almost 
completely  isolated  from  foreign  influence,  had  till 
then  conserved  their  old  heathenism  better  than  any 
other  people  in  the  West  of  Europe.  It  is  significant, 
therefore,  that  human  sacrifices  by  fire  are  known,  on 
unquestionable  evidence,  to  have  been  systematically 
practised  by  the  Celts.  The  earliest  description  of 
these  sacrifices  is  by  Julius  Caesar.  As  conqueror  of 
the  hitherto  independent  Celts  of  Gaul,  Caesar  had 
ample  opportunity  of  observing  the  national  Celtic 
religion  and  manners,  while  these  were  still  fresh  and 
crisp  from  the  native  mint  and  had  not  yet  been 
fused  in  the  melting-pot  of  Roman  civilisation.     With 

1  Bavaria,  iii.  956;  B.  K.  p.  524.        Schwabeti,  ii.   121  sq..  No.  146  ;  B.  K. 

2  Birlinger,        Volksthiiinliches      aiis      p.  524  s<j. 


IV  AMONG  THE  CELTS  279 

his  own  notes  Caesar  appears  to  have  incorporated  the 
observations  of  a  Greek  explorer,  by  name  Posidonius, 
who  travelled  in  Gaul  about  fifty  years  before  Caesar 
carried  the  Roman  arms  to  the  English  Channel. 
The  Greek  geographer  Strabo  and  the  historian 
Diodorus  seem  also  to  have  derived  their  descriptions 
of  the  Celtic  sacrifices  from  the  work  of  Posidonius, 
but  independently  of  each  other  and  of  Caesar,  for  each 
of  the  three  derivative  accounts  contains  some  details 
which  are  not  to  be  found  in  either  of  the  others.  By 
combining  them,  therefore,  we  can  restore  the  original 
account  of  Posidonius  with  some  certainty,  and  thus 
obtain  a  picture  of  the  sacrifices  offered  by  the  Celts  of 
Gaul  at  the  close  of  the  second  century  b.c.^  The 
following  seem  to  have  been  the  main  outlines  of  the 
custom.  Condemned  criminals  were  reserved  by  the 
Celts  in  order  to  be  sacrificed  to  the  gods  at  a  great 
festival  which  took  place  once  in  every  five  years. 
The  more  there  were  of  such  victims,  the  greater  was 
believed  to  be  the  fertility  of  the  land.-  When  there 
were  not  enough  criminals  to  furnish  victims,  captives 
taken  in  war  were  sacrificed  to  supply  the  deficiency. 
When  the  time  came  the  victims  were  sacrificed  by  the 
Druids  or  priests.  Some  were  shot  down  with  arrows, 
some  were  impaled,  and  some  were  burned  alive  in  the 
following  manner.  Colossal  images  of  wicker-work  or 
of  wood  and  grass  were  constructed  ;  these  were  filled 
with  live  men,  cattle,  and  animals  of  other  kinds ;  fire 
was  then  applied  to  the  images,  and  they  were  burned 
with  their  living  contents. 

1  Caesar,  i?t'//.  Gall.  vi.   15;   Strabo,  <f)oviKas  diKas  /xaXiaTa  tovtols   [i.e.    the 

iv.  4,   5,   p.    198  Casaubon  ;   Diodorus,  Druids]    eTrererpaTrTo    diKa^eiv,    Urav    re 

V.  32.      See  Mannhardt,  B.  K.  p.  525  0opa    roirwv    fi,    (popav    Kal   rrjs   xaipas 

sij'/.  vo/iii^ovcnv  inrdpxetv.      On    this   passage 

^  Strabo,    iv.    4,    4,   p.    197,   ras  de  see  Mannhardt,  £.  A',  p.  529  sgt/. 


28o  MODERN  TRACES  OF  chap. 

Such  were  the  great  festivals  held  once  every  five 
years.  But  besides  these  quinquennial  festivals,  cele- 
brated on  so  grand  a  scale  and  with,  apparently,  so 
large  an  expenditure  of  human  life,  it  seems  reasonable 
to  suppose  that  festivals  of  the  same  sort,  only  on  a 
lesser  scale,  were  held  annually,  and  that  from  these 
annual  festivals  are  lineally  descended  some  at  least 
of  the  fire-festivals  which,  with  their  traces  of  human 
sacrifices,  are  still  celebrated  year  by  year  in  many 
parts  of  Europe.  The  gigantic  images  constructed  of 
osiers  or  covered  with  grass  in  which  the  Druids  en- 
closed their  victims  remind  us  of  the  leafy  framework 
in  which  the  human  representative  of  the  tree-spirit  is 
still  so  often  encased.^  Considering,  therefore,  that 
the  fertility  of  the  land  was  apparently  supposed  to 
depend  upon  the  due  performance  of  these  sacrifices, 
Mannhardt  is  probably  right  in  viewing  the  Celtic 
victims,  cased  in  osiers  and  grass,  as  representatives 
of  the  tree-spirit  or  spirit  of  vegetation.  These 
wicker  giants  of  the  Druids  seem  to  have  still  their 
representatives  at  the  spring  and  midsummer  festivals 
of  modern  Europe.  At  Douay  a  procession  takes 
place  annually  on  the  Sunday  nearest  to  the  7th  of 
July.  The  great  feature  of  the  procession  is  a  colossal 
figure  made  of  osiers,  and  called  "the  giant,"  which  is 
moved  through  the  streets  by  means  of  rollers  and 
ropes  worked  by  men  who  are  enclosed  within  the 
figure.  The  wooden  head  of  the  giant  is  said  to  have 
been  carved  and  painted  by  Rubens.  The  figure  is 
armed  as  a  knight  with  lance  and  sword,  helmet  and 
shield.  Behind  him  march  his  wife  and  his  three  chil- 
dren, all  constructed  of  osiers  on  the  same  principle, 
but  on  a  smaller  scale. ^     At  Dunkirk  the  giant  is  forty 

1  See  vol.  i.  p.  88  sqq.  2  j^   j^^  p_  ^23,  Jioie. 


IV  OLD  CELTIC  SACRIFICES  281 

to  fifty  feet  high,  being  made  of  basket  -  work  and 
canvas,  properly  painted  and  dressed.  It  contains  a 
great  many  Hving  men  within  it,  who  move  it  about. 
Wicker  giants  of  this  sort  are  common  in  the  towns  of 
Belgium  and  French  Flanders  ;  they  are  led  about  at 
the  Carnival  in  spring.  The  people,  it  is  said,  are  much 
attached  to  these  grotesque  figures,  speak  of  them  with 
patriotic  enthusiasm,  and  never  weary  of  gazing  at 
them.^  In  England  artificial  giants  seem  to  have 
been  a  standing  feature  of  the  midsummer  festival.  A 
writer  of  the  sixteenth  century  speaks  of  "  Midsommer 
pageants  in  London,  where,  to  make  the  people  wonder, 
are  set  forth  great  and  uglie  gyants,  marching  as  if 
they  were  alive,  and  armed  at  all  points,  but  within 
they  are  stuffed  full  of  browne  paper  and  tow,  which 
the  shrewd  boyes,  underpeeping,  do  guilefully  discover, 
and  turne  to  a  greate  derision."  -  The  Mayor  of 
Chester  in  1599  "altered  many  antient  customs,  as  the 
shooting  for  the  sheriff's  breakfast ;  the  going  of  the 
Giants  at  Midsommer,  etc."^  In  these  cases  the  giants 
only  figure  in  the  processions.  But  sometimes  they 
are  burned  in  the  spring  or  summer  bonfires.  Thus 
the  people  of  the  Rue  aux  Ours  in  Paris  used  annually 
to  make  a  great  wicker-work  figure,  dressed  as  a  soldier, 
which  they  promenaded  up  and  down  the  streets  for 
several  days,  and  solemnly  burned  on  the  3d  of  July, 
the  crowd  of  spectators  singing  Salve  Regina.  The 
burning  fragments  of  the  image  were  scattered  among 
the    people,   who  eagerly  scrambled  for   them.     The 

1  B.  K.  p.  523,  jiole;  John  Milner,  2  Puttenham,  Arte  of  English  Poesie, 

The  History,  Civiland Ecclesiastical,  and  15S9,  p.  128,  quoted  by  Brand,  Popular 

Survey  of  the  Antiquities  of  Winchester,  Antiquities,  i.  323. 
i.  8  sq.  ;  Brand,  Popular  Antiquities,  i. 

2,2^  sq.;]^mtsl^og3ir\, The  Scottish  Gael,  ^  King's   Vale  Royal  of  England,  ■^. 

ii.  358(newed.);  Reinsberg-Duringsfeld,  208,  quoted  by  Brand,  I.e. 
Calendrier  Beige,  p.  123  sqq. 


2S2  MODERN  TRACES  OF  chap. 

custom  was  abolished  in  1743.^  In  Brie,  Isle  de 
France,  a  wicker-work  giant,  eighteen  feet  high,  was 
annually  burned  on  Midsummer  Eve." 

Again,  the  Druidical  custom  of  burning  live  animals, 
enclosed  in  wicker-work,  has  its  counterpart  at  the 
spring  and  midsummer  festivals.  At  Luchon  in  the 
Pyrenees  on  Midsummer  Eve  "  a  hollow  column,  com- 
posed of  strong  wicker-work,  is  raised  to  the  height  of 
about  sixty  feet  in  the  centre  of  the  principal  suburb, 
and  interlaced  with  green  foliage  up  to  the  very  top  ; 
while  the  most  beautiful  flowers  and  shrubs  procurable 
are  artistically  arranged  in  groups  below,  so  as  to  form 
a  sort  of  background  to  the  scene.  The  column  is 
then  filled  with  combustible  materials,  ready  for  igni- 
tion. At  an  appointed  hour — about  8  p.M.^a  grand 
procession,  composed  of  the  clergy,  followed  by  young 
men  and  maidens  in  holiday  attire,  pour  forth  from  the 
town  chanting  hymns,  and  take  up  their  position  around 
the  column.  Meanwhile,  bonfires  are  lit,  with  beautiful 
effect,  in  the  surrounding  hills.  As  many  living  ser- 
pents as  could  be  collected  are  now  thrown  into  the 
column,  which  is  set  on  fire  at  the  base  by  means  of 
torches,  armed  with  which  about  fifty  boys  and  men 
dance  around  with  frantic  gestures.  The  serpents,  to 
avoid  the  flames,  wriggle  their  way  to  the  top,  whence 
they  are  seen  lashing  out  laterally  until  finally  obliged 
to  drop,  their  struggles  for  life  giving  rise  to  enthusi- 
astic delight  among  the  surrounding  spectators.  This 
is  a  favourite  annual  ceremony  for  the  inhabitants  of 
Luchon  and  its  neighbourhood,  and  local  tradition 
assigns  to  it  a  heathen  origin."^     In  the  midsummer 

1   Liebrecht,  Gervasius  von   Tilbury,  ^  Athenaeum,    241)1    July    1S69,    p. 

15.  212  sq.;  B.  K.  p.  514.  115  ;  />'.  K.  p.  515  sq. 

'  ^-  ^•^'-  PP'  514,  523- 


IV  OLD  CELTIC  SACRIFICES  283 

fires  formerly  kindled  on  the  Place  de  Greve  at  Paris 
it  was  the  custom  to  burn  a  basket,  barrel,  or  sack  lull 
of  live  cats  ;  sometimes  a  fox  was  burned.  The  people 
collected  the  embers  and  ashes  of  the  fire  and  took 
them  home,  believing  that  they  brought  good  luck.^ 
At  Metz  midsummer  fires  were  lighted  on  the  Esplan- 
ade, and  six  cats  were  burned  in  them."  In  Russia  a 
white  cock  was  sometimes  burned  in  the  midsummer 
bonfire;^  in  Meissen  or  Thuringen  a  horse's  head  used 
to  be  thrown  into  it.^  Sometimes  animals  are  burned 
in  the  spring  bonfires.  In  the  Vosges  cats  were  burned 
on  Shrove  Tuesday ;  in  Elsass  they  were  thrown  into 
the  Easter  bonfire.^  We  have  seen  that  squirrels  were 
sometimes  burned  in  the  Easter  fire. 

If  the  men  who  were  burned  in  wicker  frames  by 
the  Druids  represented  the  spirit  of  vegetation,  the 
animals  burned  along  with  them  must  have  had  the 
same  meaning.  Amongst  the  animals  burned  by  the 
Druids  or  in  modern  bonfires  have  been,  as  we  saw, 
cattle,  cats,  foxes,  and  cocks  ;  and  all  of  these  creatures 
are  variously  regarded  by  European  peoples  as  embodi- 
ments of  the  corn-spirit."  I  am  not  aware  of  any  certain 
evidence  that  in  Europe  serpents  have  been  regarded 
as  representatives  of  the  tree-spirit  or  corn-spirit ;  ^  as 
victims  at  the  midsummer  festival  in  Luchon  they  may 


1  ^o\{,  Beitrdgezitr  deiilschen  Myth-  Simon    Grunau,    Prenssische    Chronik, 
ologie,  ii.  388  ;  B.  K.  p.  515.  ed.  Perlbach,  i.  p.  89  ;  Hartknoch,  Alt- 

2  B.  K.  p.  515.  mid   Neiies    Prensseii,    pp.    143,    163. 
^  Grimm,    Deutsche    Mythologie,^   i.  Serpents,    again,    played    an  important 

519  ;  B.  K.  p.  515.  part  in  the  worship  of  Demeter,  as  we 

■*  B.  K.  p.  515.  have  seen.    But  that  they  were  regarded 

5  lb.  as  embodiments  of  her  can  hardly  be 

"  Above,  vol.  i.  p.  408,  vol.  ii.  p.  1  Ji/;/.  assumed.      In   Siam   the  spirit   of  the 

''  Some  of  the  serpents  worshipped  takhien    tree    is    believed     to    appear, 

by  the  old    Prussians    lived   in   hollow  sometimes   in   the   form   of  a   woman, 

oaks,  and  as  oaks  were  sacred  among  sometimes    in    the   form   of  a   serpent. 

the    Prussians,  the   serpents  may  have  Bastian,  Z>/£  Volker  des  ostlichen  Asien, 

been   regarded   as  genii   of    the   trees.  iii.  251. 


2S4  CELTIC  SACRIFICES  chap. 

have  replaced  animals  which  really  had  this  representa- 
tive character.  When  the  meaning  of  the  custom  was 
forgotten,  utility  and  humanity  might  unite  in  suggest- 
ing the  substitution  of  noxious  reptiles  as  victims  in 
room  of  harmless  and  useful  animals. 

Thus  it  appears  that  the  sacrificial  rites  of  the  Celts 
of  ancient  Gaul  can  be  traced  in  the  popular  festivals 
of  modern  Europe.  Naturally  it  is  in  France,  or  rather 
in  the  wider  area  comprised  within  the  limits  of  ancient 
Gaul,  that  these  rites  have  left  the  clearest  traces 
in  the  customs  of  burning  giants  of  wicker-work 
and  animals  enclosed  in  wicker-work  or  baskets. 
These  customs,  it  will  have  been  remarked,  are  gener- 
ally observed  at  or  about  midsummer.  From  this  we 
may  infer  that  the  original  rites  of  which  these  are  the 
degenerate  successors  were  solemnised  at  midsummer. 
This  inference  harmonises  with  the  conclusion  sug- 
gested by  a  general  survey  of  European  folk-custom, 
that  the  midsummer  festival  must  on  the  whole  have 
been  the  most  widely  diffused  and  the  most  solemn  of 
all  the  yearly  festivals  celebrated  by  the  primitive 
Aryans  in  Europe.  And  in  its  application  to  the  Celts 
this  general  conclusion  is  corroborated  by  the  more  or 
less  perfect  vestiges  of  midsummer  fire-festivals  which 
we  have  found  lingering  in  all  those  westernmost  pro- 
montories and  islands  which  are  the  last  strong-holds 
of  the  Celtic  race  in  Europe  —  Britanny,  Cornwall, 
Wales,  the  Isle  of  Man,  Scotland,  and  Ireland.  In 
Scotland,  it  is  true,  the  chief  Celtic  fire- festivals 
certainly  appear  to  have  been  held  at  Beltane  (ist 
May)  and  Hallow  E'en  ;  but  this  was  exceptional. 

To  sum  up  :  the  combined  evidence  of  ancient 
writers  and  of  modern  folk-custom  points  to  the  con- 
clusion   that   amongst   the    Celts    of  Gaul    an   annual 


IV  AND  WORSHIP  OF  MISTLETOE  285 

festival  was  celebrated  at  midsummer,  at  which  living 
men,  representing  the  tree -spirit  or  spirit  of  vegeta- 
tion, were  enclosed  in  wicker  -  frames  and  burned. 
The  whole  rite  was  designed  as  a  charm  to  make  the 
sun  to  shine  and  the  crops  to  grow. 

But  another  great  feature  of  the  Celtic  midsummer 
festival  appears  to  have  been  the  gathering  of  the 
sacred  mistletoe  by  the  Druids.  The  ceremony  has 
been  thus  described  by  Pliny  in  a  passage  which  has 
often  been  quoted.  After  enumerating  the  different 
kinds  of  mistletoe  he  proceeds  :  "  In  treating  of  this 
subject,  the  admiration  in  which  the  mistletoe  is  held 
throughout  Gaul  ought  not  to  pass  unnoticed.  The 
Druids,  for  so  they  call  their  wizards,  esteem  nothing 
more  sacred  than  the  mistletoe  and  the  tree  on  which 
it  grows,  provided  only  that  the  tree  is  an  oak.  But 
apart  from  this  they  choose  oak-woods  for  their  sacred 
groves  and  perform  no  sacred  rites  without  oak-leaves ; 
so  that  the  very  name  of  Druids  may  be  regarded  as  a 
Greek  appellation  derived  from  their  worship  of  the 
oak.^  For  they  believe  that  whatever  grows  on  these 
trees  is  sent  from  heaven,  and  is  a  sign  that  the  tree 
has  been  chosen  by  the  god  himself.  The  mistletoe  is 
very  rarely  to  be  met  with  ;  but  when  it  is  found, 
they  gather  it  with  solemn  ceremony.  This  they  do 
especially  in  the  sixth  month  (the  beginnings  of  their 
months  and  years  are  determined  by  the  moon)  and 
after  the  tree  has  passed  the  thirtieth  year  of  its  age, 


1  Pliny  derives  the  name  Druid  from  Gi-iechisch-lateinisches    etymolog.    IVdr- 

the  Greek  di-iis,  "oak."      He  did  not  terbuch,    p.     368    sqq.  ;    Rhys,     Celtic 

know  that  the  Celtic  word  for  oak  was  Heathendom,  p.  221  sqq.      In  the  High- 

the   same    {daur),    and    that    therefore  lands  of  Scotland    the  word    is    found 

Druid,    in   the   sense   of  priest   of  the  in    place-names    like   Bendarroch   (the 

oak,  was  genuine  Celtic,  not  borrowed  mountain  of  the  oak),  Craigandarroch, 

from  the  Greek.      See  Curtius,  Griech.  etc. 
Etymologie,^    p.     238     sq.  ;     Vanii^ek, 


286  PLANTS  GATHERED  ON  chap". 

because  by  that  time  it  has  plenty  of  vigour,  though  it 
has  not  attained  half  its  full  size.  After  due  prepara- 
tions have  been  made  for  a  sacrifice  and  a  feast  under 
the  tree,  they  hail  it  as  the  universal  healer  and  bring 
to  the  spot  two  white  bulls,  whose  horns  have  never 
been  bound  before.  A  priest  clad  in  a  white  robe 
climbs  the  tree  and  with  a  golden^  sickle  cuts  the 
mistletoe,  which  is  caught  in  a  white  cloth.  Then 
they  sacrifice  the  victims,  praying  that  God  may  make 
his  own  gift  to  prosper  with  those  upon  whom  he  has 
bestowed  it.  They  believe  that  a  potion  prepared 
from  mistletoe  will  make  barren  animals  to  brinor  forth, 
and  that  the  plant  is  a  remedy  against  all  poison."" 

In  saying  that  the  Druids  cut  the  mistletoe  in  the 
sixth  month  Pliny  must  have  had  in  his  mind  the 
Roman  calendar,  in  which  the  sixth  month  was  June. 
Now,  if  the  cutting  of  the  mistletoe  took  place  in  June, 
we  may  be  almost  certain  that  the  day  which  witnessed 
the  ceremony  was  Midsummer  Eve.  For  in  many 
places  Midsummer  Eve,  a  day  redolent  of  a  thousand 
decaying  fancies  of  yore,  is  still  the  time  for  culling 
certain  magic  plants,  whose  evanescent  virtue  can  be 
secured  at  this  mystic  season  alone.  For  example,  on 
Midsummer  Eve  the  fern  is  believed  to  burst  into  a 
wondrous  bloom,  like  fire  or  burnished  o-old.     Who- 


1  It  is  still  a  folk-lore  rule  not  to  cut  In  Cambodia  when  a  man  perceives  a 
the  mistletoe  with  iron  ;  some  say  it  certain  parasitic  plant  growing  on  a 
should  be  cut  with  gold.  Grimm,  tamarind-tree,  he  dresses  in  white  and 
Deutsche  ]\IythoIogie,^\\.  looi.  On  the  taking  a  new.  earthen  pot  climbs  the 
objection  to  the  use  of  iron  in  such  cases,  tree  at  mid-day.  He  puts  the  plant  in 
see  Liebrecht,  Gervasius  von  Tillmry,  the  pot  and  lets  the  whole  fall  to  the 
p.   103  ;  and  above,  vol.  i.  p.   177  sqq.  ground.      Then  in  the  pot  he  makes  a 

2  Pliny,  Nat.  Hist.  xvi.  §  249  sqij.  decoction  which  renders  invulnerable. 
On  the  Celtic  worship  of  the  oak,  see  also  A5'monier,  "  Notes  sur  les  coutumes  et 
Maximus  Tyrius,  Dissert,  viii.  8,  KeXrot  croyances  superstitieuses  des  Cambod- 
ff^jSovai  fxkv  Aia  dyaXfia  de  Atos  KeXriKov  giens,"  in  Cochinchine  F?'ancaise,  Ex- 
i'i/ztjAtj  5pOs.  With  this  mode  of  gather-  citrsions  et  Reconnaissatices,  No.  16,  p. 
ing  the  mistletoe  compare  the  following.  136. 


MIDSUMMER  EVE  2S7 


ever  catches  this  bloom,  which  very  quickly  fades  and 
falls  off,  can  make  himself  invisible,  can  understand 
the  lanpfuage  of  animals,  and  so  forth.  But  he  must  not 
touch  it  with  his  hand  ;  he  must  spread  a  white  cloth 
under  the  fern,  and  the  magic  bloom  (or  seed)  will  fall 
into  it.^  Again,  St.  ]o\\ns  vdort  {Hype7'ic7nji  perfora- 
tum\  a  herb  which  is  believed  to  heal  all  kinds  of 
wounds  and  to  drive  away  witches  and  demons,  is 
gathered  on  Midsummer  Eve  (Eve  of  St.  John),  and 
is  worn  as  an  amulet  or  hung  over  doors  and  windows 
on  that  day."  Again,  mugwort  {^Artemisia  vulgaris)  is 
believed  to  possess  magic  qualities  provided  it  be 
gathered  on  St.  John's  Eve.  Hence  in  France  it  is 
called  the  herb  of  St.  John.  People  weave  themselves 
a  girdle  of  the  plant,  believing  that  it  will  protect  them 
against  ghosts,  magic,  misfortune,  and  disease,  through- 
out the  year.  Or  they  weave  garlands  of  it  on  St. 
John's  Eve,  and  look  through  them  at  the  midsummer 
bonfire  or  put  them  on  their  heads.  Whoever  does 
this  will  suffer  no  aches  in  his  eyes  or  head  that  year. 
Sometimes  the  plant  is  thrown  into  the  midsummer 
bonfire.^  The  superstitious  association  of  fern-seed, 
St.  John's  wort,  and  mugwort  with  Midsummer  Eve 
is  widely  diffused  over  Europe.  The  following  associa- 
tions seem  to  be  more  local.  In  England  the  orpine 
{Sedum    telephium)    is    popularly    called    Midsummer 

1  Wuttke,    Der   deittsche    Volksaber-  ^  V>x2CCiA,  Popular  A7ttiqitities,\.  t,oi , 

glaubep'    §     123;     Grohmann,     Aber-  2>'^2  ;  Dyer,  Folk-lore  of  Pla?zts, -p-p-  62, 

glanben    und    Gebrdiuhe    aus    Bbhmen  2S6  •,¥nex\A,  Flowers  attd  Flower  Lore, 

iind  Mdhren,  %%  bj-^-G-JT,  Gubernatis,  pp.     147,     149,     150,    540;    Wuttke, 

Mythologie    des   Plantes,    ii.    144    sqq.;  %  134. 
Friend,   Flowers  and  Flower  Lore,   p. 

362  ;    Brand,    Popular  Antiquities,    i.  ^  Grimm,    D.    M.^   i.     514    sq.,    ii. 

314     sqq.  ;     Vonbun,      Beitrdge     zttr  1013     sq.,    iii.     356;     Grohmann,    op. 

dcutschen     Mythologie,     p.     133     sqq.;  «V.,  §  635-637 ;   Friend,  op.  cit.  p.  75; 

Burne   and  Jackson,    Shropshire  Folk-  Gubernatis,  Afyth,   des  Plantes,  i.    189 

/.?;'(?,  p.  242.   C"^.  Archaeological  Review,  sq.,\\.  16  sqq. 
i.   1645^^. 


MISTLETOE  GATHERED 


Men,  because  it  has  been  customary  to  gather  it  on 
Midsummer  Eve  for  the  purpose  of  using  it  to  ascer- 
tain the  fate  of  lovers  ;^  and  in  England  sprigs  of  red 
sage  are  sometimes  gathered  on  Midsummer  Eve  for 
the  same  purpose.^  In  Bohemia  poachers  fancy  they 
can  make  themselves  invulnerable  by  means  of  fir- 
cones gathered  before  sunrise  on  St.  John's  Day.^ 
Again,  in  Bohemia  wild  thyme  gathered  on  Mid- 
summer Day  is  used  to  fumigate  the  trees  on  Christmas 
Eve,  in  order  that  they  may  grow  well."*  In  Germany 
and  Bohemia  a  plant  called  St.  John's  Flower  or  St. 
John's  Blood  (^Hieracium  piloselld)  is  gathered  on  Mid- 
summer Eve.  It  should  be  rooted  up  with  a  gold 
coin.  The  plant  is  supposed  to  bring  luck  and  to  be 
especially  good  for  sick  cattle.^ 

These  facts  by  themselves  would  suffice  to  raise 
a  strong  presumption  that,  if  the  Druids  cut  the 
mistletoe  in  June,  as  we  learn  from  Pliny  that  they 
did,  the  day  on  which  they  cut  it  could  have  been  no 
other  than  Midsummer  Eve  or  Midsummer  Day. 
This  presumption  is  converted  into  practical  cer- 
tainty when  we  find  it  to  be  still  a  rule  of  folk- 
lore that  the  mistletoe  should  be  cut  on  Midsummer 
Eve.*^  Further,  the  peasants  of  Piedmont  and  Lom- 
bardy  still  go  out  on  Midsummer  morning  to  search 
the  oak -leaves  for  the  "oil  of  St.  John,"  which 
is  supposed  to  heal  all  wounds  made  with  cutting 
instruments.^  Originally  no  doubt  the  "oil  of  St. 
John  "  was  simply  the  mistletoe,  or  a  decoction  made 

^  Aubrey,   Remaines   of    Gentilisfne  ^  Grohmann,  §  68i ;  Wuttke,  §  134 ; 

and Judaisme,  p.    25  sq.  ;   Brand,  Pop.  Rochholz,      Detitscher      Glavbe      t<nd 

Ant.  i.  TfZq  sqq.;  Friend,  p.   136.  Branch,   i.    9;    Gubernatis,  Mythologie 

2  Brand,  i.  333.  ^es  Plantes,  i.  190. 

„  ^,     ,                        ,.  ^  Grimm,  D.  I\I.^  \\\.  78,  31;^. 

•*  Grohmann,  ^  1420.  t  r^   \          »•      nr  ti    1     ■    j      m 

'  ^    ^  '   Gubernatis,  Alythologie  des  Plantes, 

*  Grolimann,  §  648.  ii.  73. 


IV  ON  MIDSUMMER  EVE  289 

from  it.  For  in  Holstein  the  mistletoe,  especially  oak- 
mistletoe,  is  still  regarded  as  a  panacea  for  green 
wounds;^  and  if,  as  is  alleged,  "all-healer"  is  an 
epithet  of  the  mistletoe  in  the  modern  Celtic  speech 
of  Britanny,  Wales;  Ireland,  and  Scotland,^  this  can  be 
nothing  but  a  survival  of  the  name  by  which,  as  we 
have  seen,  the  Druids  addressed  the  oak,  or  rather, 
perhaps,  the  mistletoe. 

Thus  it  appears  that  the  two  main  features  of  the 
Balder  myth — the  pulling  of  the  mistletoe  and  the 
burning  of  the  god — were  reproduced  in  the  great 
midsummer  festival  of  the  Celts.  But  in  Scandinavia 
itself,  the  home  of  Balder,  both  these  features  of  his 
myth  can  still  be  traced  in  the  popular  celebration  of 
midsummer.  For  in  Sweden  on  Midsummer  Eve 
mistletoe  is  "diligently  sought  after,  they  believing  it 
to  be,  in  a  high  degree,  possessed  of  mystic  qualities  ; 
and  that  if  a  sprig  of  it  be  attached  to  the  ceiling  of 
the  dwelling-house,  the  horse's  stall,  or  the  cow's  crib, 
the  '  Troll '  will  then  be  powerless  to  injure  either 
man  or  beast. "^  And  in  Sweden,  Norway,  and  Den- 
mark huofe  bonfires  are  kindled  on  hills  and  eminences 
on  Midsummer  Eve."*  It  does  not  appear,  indeed, 
that  any  effigy  is  burned  in  these  bonfires  ;  but  the 
burning  of  an  efiigy  is  a  feature  which  might  easily 
drop  out  after  its  meaning  was  forgotten.  And  the 
name  of  Balder's  bale-fires  {Baldei^'s  Bdlar),  by  which 
these  midsummer  fires  were  formerly  known  in 
Sweden,^  puts  their  connection  with  Balder  beyond 
the    reach   of  doubt,   and    makes    it    certain    that    in 

1  Friend,  Flowers  and  Flower  Lore,  ^  Grimm,  D.  RI.^  ii.   1009. 

p.     378.       Hunters    believe    that    the  ^  L.  \Aoyd,  Peasant  Life  in  Swedeft, 

mistletoe  heals  all  wounds  and  brings  p.  269. 

luck   in   hunting.      Kuhn,    Herablmnft  *  Lloyd,   op.    cit.   p.    259  ;    Grimm, 

des  F'euers,'^  p.  206.  D.  A/.*  i.  517  sq.  ^  Lloyd,  I.e. 

VOL.   II  U 


290  BALDER  A   TREE-SPIRIT  chap. 

former  times  either  a  living  representative  or  an  effigy 
of  Balder  must  have  been  annually  burned  in  them. 
Midsummer  was  the  season  sacred  to  Balder,  and  the 
fact  that  the  Swedish  poet  Tegner,  in  his  FiHtJiiofssaga, 
places  the  burning  of  Balder  at  midsummer^  may  per- 
haps be  allowed  as  evidence  of  a  Swedish  tradition  to 
that  effect.  From  this  double  coincidence  of  the 
Balder  myth,  on  the  one  hand  with  the  midsummer 
festival  of  Celtic  Gaul  and  on  the  other  with  the  mid- 
summer festival  in  Scandinavia,  we  may  safely  con- 
clude that  the  myth  is  not  a  myth  pure  and  simple, 
that  is,  a  mere  description  of  physical  phenomena  in 
imagery  borrowed  from  human  life ;  it  must  un- 
doubtedly be  a  ritualistic  myth,  that  is  a  myth  based 
on  actual  observation  of  religious  ceremonies  and  pur- 
porting to  explain  them.  Now,  the  standing  explana- 
tion which  myth  gives  of  ritual  is  that  the  ritual  in 
question  is  a  periodic  commemoration  of  some  remark- 
able transaction  in  the  past,  the  actors  in  which  may 
have  been  either  gods  or  men.  Such  an  explanation 
the  Balder  myth  would  seem  to  offer  of  the  annual 
fire-festivals  which,  as  we  saw,  must  have  played  so 
prominent  a  part  in  the  primitive  religion  of  the  Aryan 
race  in  Europe.  Balder  must  have  been  the  Norse 
representative  of  the  being  who  was  burnt  in  effigy  or 
in  the  person  of  a  living  man  at  the  fire-festivals  in 
question.  But  if,  as  I  have  tried  to  show,  the  being 
so  burnt  was  the  tree-spirit  or  spirit  of  vegetation,  it 
follows  that  Balder  also  must  have  been  a  tree-spirit 
or  spirit  of  vegetation. 

But  it   is  desirable  to  determine,    if  we   can,    the 

1  Grimm,  D.  J\IA  iii.  78,  who  adds,  the  whole  myth,  has  been  quite  lost  on 

"  Mahnen  die  Johannisfeuei- an  Baldrs  the    mythologists   who    since   Grimm's 

Leichenbrand V^     This   pregnant  hint,  day  have  enveloped   the   subject   in  a 

which  contains  in  germ  the  solution  of  cloud  of  learned  dust. 


OAK-WORSHIP  291 


particular  kind  of  tree  or  trees,  of  which  a  personal 
representative  was  burned  at  the  fire -festivals.  For 
we  may  be  quite  sure  that  it  was  not  as  a  representa- 
tive of  vegetation  in  general  that  the  victim  suffered 
death.  The  conception  of  vegetation  in  general  is  too 
abstract  to  be  primitive.  Most  probably  the  victim  at 
first  represented  a  particular  kind  of  sacred  tree.  Now 
of  all  European  trees  none  has  such  claims  as  the  oak 
to  be  considered  as  pre-eminently  the  sacred  tree  of 
the  Aryans.  Its  worship  is  attested  for  all  the  great 
branches  of  the  Aryan  stock  in  Europe.  We  have 
seen  that  it  was  not  only  the  sacred  tree,  but  the 
principal  object  of  worship  of  both  Celts  and  Slavs.^ 
According  to  Grimm,  the  oak  ranked  first  among  the 
holy  trees  of  the  Germans,  and  was  indeed  their  chief 
god.  It  is  certainly  known  to  have  been  adored  by 
them  in  the  age  of  heathendom,  and  traces  of  its 
worship  have  survived  in  various  parts  of  Germany 
almost  to  the  present  day.^  Amongst  the  ancient 
Italians,  according  to  Preller,  the  oak  was  sacred  above 
all  other  trees.^  The  image  of  Jupiter  on  the  Capitol 
at  Rome  seems  to  have  been  originally  nothing 
but  a  natural  oak-tree.^  At  Dodona,  perhaps  the 
oldest  of  all  Greek  sanctuaries,  Zeus  was  worshipped 
as  immanent  in  the  sacred  oak,  and  the  rustling  of 
its  leaves  in  the  wind  was  his  voice.^  If,  then,  the 
great  god  of  both  Greeks  and  Romans  was  repre- 
sented in  some  of  his  oldest  shrines  under  the  form 
of  an  oak,  and  if  the  oak  was  the  principal  object 
of   worship   of   Celts,    Germans,    and   Slavs,   we   may 

1  Above,  p.  285,  and  vol.  i.  pp.  58,64.       Der    Batunkultus     der    Hellencn,     p. 

2  Grimm,  D.   M.*  i.  55  sij.,  58  sc/.,      133  si/. 

ii.  542,  iii.  187  sij.  ^  Botticher,    o/>.    cit.    p.     11 1    sqq.% 

3  Preller,  R6m.  Mythol?  i.  108.  Preller,  Grieclu  Mythol.^ed.  C.  Robert, 
■*  Livy,  i.    10.      Cp.    C.    Botticher,      i.  122  sqq. 


292  ■     SACRED  FIRES  MADE  chap. 

certainly  conclude  that  this  tree  was  one  of  the  chief, 
if  not  the  very  chief  divinity  of  the  Aryans  before 
the  dispersion  ;  and  that  their  primitive  home  must 
have  lain  in  a  land  which  was  clothed  with  forests 
.of  oak.^ 

Now,  considering  the  primitive  character  and  re- 
markable similarity  of  the  fire-festivals  observed  by  all 
the  branches  of  the  Aryan  race  in  Europe,  we  may 
infer  that  these  festivals  form  part  of  the  common 
stock  of  religious  observances  which  the  various  peoples 
carried  with  them  in  their  wanderings  from  their  ori- 
ginal home.  But,  if  I  am  right,  an  essential  feature  of 
those  primitive  fire-festivals  was  the  burning  of  a  man 
who  represented  the  tree-spirit.  In  view,  then,  of 
the  place  occupied  by  the  oak  in  the  religion  of  the 
Aryans,  the  presumption  is  that  the  tree  so  repre- 
sented at  the  fire-festivals  must  originally  have  been  the 
oak.  So  far  as  the  Celts  and  Slavs  are  concerned,  this 
conclusion  will  perhaps  hardly  be  contested.  But  both 
for  them  and  for  the  Germans  it  is  confirmed  by  a 
remarkable  piece  of  religious  conservatism.  The  most 
primitive  method  known  to  man  of  producing  fire  is 
by  rubbing  two  pieces  of  wood  against  each  other  till 
they  ignite  ;  and  we  have  seen  that  this  method  is  still 
used  in  Europe  for  kindling  sacred  fires  such  as  the 

1  Without  hazarding  an  opinion  on  (Jena,  1S90),   p.    394.      In  prehistoric 

the   vexed    question    of    the    primitive  times  the  oak  appears  to  have  been  the 

home  of  the   Aryans,    I   may  observe  chief  tree  in  the  forests  which  clothed 

that  in  various  parts  of  Europe  the  oalc  the  valley  of  the  Po  ;  the  piles  on  which 

seems  to  have  been  formerly  more  com-  the   pile  villages   rested   were   of  oak. 

mon  than  it  is  now.      In  Denmark  the  W .  Helbig,  Die  Italiker  hi  der  Poebene, 

present  beech  woods  were  preceded  by  p.  25  sq.      The  classical  tradition  that 

oak  woods  and  these  by  the  Scotch  fir.  in  the  olden  time  men  subsisted  largely 

Lyell,    Antiquity    of  Alan,    p.    9  ;    J.  on  acorns  is  borne  out  by  the  evidence 

Geikie,  Prehistoric  Eta-ope,  p.  486  sq.  of  the  pile  villages  in  Northern  Italy, 

In  parts  of  North  Germany  it  appears  in  which  great  quantities  of  acorns  have 

from  the  evidence  of  archives  that  the  been  discovered.      See   Helbig,  oj).  fit. 

fir  has  ousted  the  oak.      O.  Schrader,  pp.   16  sq.,  26,  72  sq. 
Sprachvergleichung  und  Urgeschichte,'^ 


WITH  OAK-WOOD  293 


need-fire,  and  that  most  probably  it  was  formerly 
resorted  to  at  all  the  fire-festivals  under  discussion. 
Now  it  is  som'etimes  prescribed  that  the  need-fire,  or 
other  sacred  fire,  must  be  made  by  the  friction  of  a 
particular  kind  of  wood  ;  and  wherever  the  kind  of 
wood  is  prescribed,  whether  among  Celts,  Germans,  or 
Slavs,  that  wood  is  always  the  oak.  Thus  we  have  seen 
that  amongst  the  Slavs  of  Masuren  the  new  fire  for  the 
village  is  made  on  Midsummer  Day  by  causing  a 
wheel  to  revolve  rapidly  round  an  axle  of  oak  till  the 
axle  takes  fire.^  When  the  perpetual  fire  which  the 
ancient  Slavs  used  to  maintain  chanced  to  go  out,  it 
was  rekindled  by  the  friction  of  a  piece  of  oak-wood, 
which  had  been  previously  heated  by  being  struck 
with  a  gray  (not  a  red)  stone."  In  Germany  the  need- 
fire  was  regularly  kindled  by  the  friction  of  oak-wood  f 
and  in  the  Highlands  of  Scotland,  both  the  Beltane  and 
the  need-fires  were  lighted  by  similar  means,*  Now,  if 
the  sacred  fire  was  regularly  kindled  by  the  friction  of 
oak-wood,  we  may  infer  that  originally  the  fire  was  also 
fed  with  the  same  material.  In  point  of  fact,  the  per- 
petual fire  which  burned  under  the  sacred  oak  at  the 
great  Slavonian  sanctuary  of  Romove  was  fed  with 
oak-wood  ;  ^  and  that  oak-wood  was  formerly  the  fuel 

1  Above,  p.  265  s(j.  The   writer  who  styles  himself  Mon- 

2  Praetorius,  Deliciae  Pnissicae,  1 9  tanus  says  [Die  deiifscheii  Volksfeste,  etc. , 
sq.  Mr.  Ralston  states  (on  what  p.  127)  that  the  need-fire  was  made  by 
authority  I  do  not  know)  that  if  the  the  friction  of  oak  and  fir.  Sometimes 
fire  maintained  in  honour  of  the  Lithu-  it  is  said  that  the  need-fire  should  be 
anian  god  Perkunas  went  out,  it  was  made  with  nine  different  kinds  of  wood 
rekindled  by  sparks  struck  from  a  stone  (Grimm,  D.  Af.^  i.  503,  505;  Wolf, 
which  the  image  of  the  god  held  in  his  Beitrdge  ziir  deutschen  Mythologie,  ii. 
hand.  Sougs  of  the  Russian  People,  380 ;  Jahn,  Die  deutschen  Opferge- 
p.  88.  brdtuhe,  p.  27) ;  but  the  kinds  of  wood 

3  Grimm,    D.    M^    i.    502,     503 ;  are  not  specified. 

Kuhn,  Herabkunft  des  Feuers,'^  P-  43  ;  *  John   Ramsay,  Scotland  and  Scots- 

Prohle,    Harzbilder,    p.    75;    Bartsch,  ineti  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  \\.  OfifT.', 

Sagen,    Mdrche7i    und    Gebrduche   aus  Grimm,  D.  Jl/.*  i.  506.      See  above,  p. 

Mecklenburg,      ii.       150;      Rochholz,  255. 

Deutscher  Glaube  iind  Branch,  ii.  148.  ^  Above,  vol.  i.  p.  58.. 


294 


MAN  BURNT  AS 


burned  in  the  midsummer  fires  may  perhaps  be  inferred 
from  the  circumstance  that  in  many  mountain  districts 
of  Germany  peasants  are  still  in  the  habit  of  making 
up  their  cottage  fire  on  Midsummer  Day  with  a  heavy 
block  of  oak-wood.  The  block  is  so  arranged  that  it 
smoulders  slowly  and  is  not  finally  reduced  to  charcoal 
till  the  expiry  of  a  year.  Then  upon  next  Midsummer 
Day  the  charred  embers  of  the  old  log  are  removed 
to  make  room  for  the  new  one,  and  are  mixed  with 
the  seed-corn  or  scattered  about  the  garden.  This  is 
believed  to  promote  the  growth  of  the  crops  and  to 
preserve  them  from  blight  and  vermin.^  It  may  be 
remembered  that  at  the  Boeotian  festival  of  the 
Daedala,  the  analogy  of  which  to  the  spring  and  mid- 
summer festivals  of  modern  Europe  has  been  already 
pointed  out,  the  great  feature  was  the  felling  and  burn- 
ing of  an  oak.^  The  general  conclusion  is,  that  at 
those  periodic  or  occasional  ceremonies,  of  which  the 
object  was  to  cause  the  sun  to  shine,  and  the  fruits  of 
the  earth  to  grow,  the  ancient  Aryans  both  kindled 
and  fed  the  fire  with  the  sacred  oak-wood. 

But  if  at  these  solemn  rites  the  fire  was  regularly 
made  of  oak-wood,  it  follows  that  the  man  who  was 
burned  in  it  as  a  personification  of  the  tree-spirit  could 
have  represented  no  tree  but  the  oak.  The  sacred 
oak  was  thus  burned  in  duplicate  ;  the  wood  of  the 
tree  was  consumed  in  the  fire,  and  along  with  it  was 
consumed  a  living  man  as  a  personification  of  the  oak- 
spirit.  The  conclusion  thus  drawn  for  the  European 
Aryans  in  general  is  confirmed  in  its  special  application 
to  the  Celts  and  Scandinavians  by  the  relation  in  which, 
amongst  these  peoples,  the  mistletoe  stood  to  the  burn- 
ing of  the  victim  in  the  midsummer  fire.     We  have 

1  Montanus,  Die  deutschen  Volksfeste,  etc.,  p.  127.        ^  Above,  vol.  i.  p.  100. 


REPRESENTATIVE  OF  THE  OAK  295 


seen  that  among  Celts  and  Scandinavians  it  has  been 
customary  to  gather  the  mistletoe  at  midsummer.  But 
so  far  as  appears  on  the  face  of  this  custom,  there  is 
nothing  to  connect  it  with  the  midsummer  fires  in 
which  human  victims  or  effigies  of  them  were  burned. 
Even  if  the  fire,  as  seems  probable,  was  originally 
always  made  with  oak-wood,  why  should  it  have  been 
necessary  to  pull  the  mistletoe  ?  The  last  link  between 
the  midsummer  customs  of  gathering  the  mistletoe 
and  lighting  the  bonfires  is  supplied  by  Balder's 
myth,  which  certainly  cannot  be  disjoined  from  the 
customs  in  question.  The  myth  shows  that  a  vital 
connection  must  once  have  been  believed  to  subsist 
between  the  mistletoe  and  the  human  representative  of 
the  oak  who  was  burned  in  the  fire.  According  to  the 
myth,  Balder  could  be  killed  by  nothing  in  heaven  or 
earth  except  the  mistletoe  ;  and  so  long  as  the  mistletoe 
remained  on  the  oak,  he  was  not  only  immortal,  but 
invulnerable.  Now,  as  soon  as  we  see  that  Balder 
was  the  oak,  the  origin  of  the  myth  becomes  plain. 
The  mistletoe  was  viewed  as  the  seat  of  life  of  the  oak, 
and  so  long  as  it  was  uninjured  nothing  could  kill  or 
even  wound  the  oak.  The  conception  of  the  mistletoe 
as  the  seat  of  life  of  the  oak  would  naturally  be  sug- 
gested to  primitive  people  by  the  observation  that 
while  the  oak  is  deciduous,  the  mistletoe  which  grows 
on  it  is  evergreen.  In  winter  the  sight  of  its  fresh 
foliao-e  amonof  the  bare  branches  must  have  been  hailed 
by  the  worshippers  of  the  tree  as  a  sign  that  the  divine 
life  which  had  ceased  to  animate  the  branches  yet 
survived  in  the  mistletoe,  as  the  heart  of  a  sleeper 
still  beats  when  his  body  is  motionless.  Hence  when 
the  god  had  to  be  killed — when  the  sacred  tree  had 
to  be  burnt — it  was  necessary  to  begin  by  breaking  off 


296  THE  MISTLETOE 


the  mistletoe.  For  so  long  as  the  mistletoe  remained 
intact,  the  oak  (so  people  thought)  was  invulnerable ; 
all  the  blows  of  their  knives  and  axes  would  glance 
harmless  from  its  surface.  But  once  tear  from  the  oak 
its  sacred  heart — the  mistletoe — and  the  tree  nodded 
to  its  fall.  And  when  in  later  times  the  spirit  of  the 
oak  came  to  be  represented  by  a  living  man,  it  was 
logically  necessary  to  suppose  that,  like  the  tree  he 
personated,  he  could  neither  be  killed  nor  wounded 
so  long  as  the  mistletoe  remained  uninjured.  The 
pulling  of  the  mistletoe  was  thus  at  once  the  signal 
and  the  cause  of  his  death. 

But  since  the  idea  of  a  being  whose  life  is  thus,  in 
a  sense,  outside  itself,  must  be  strange  to  many  readers, 
and  has,  indeed,  not  yet  been  recognised  in  its  full 
bearing  on  primitive  superstition,  it  will  be  worth 
while  to  devote  a  couple  of  sections  to  the  subject. 
The  result  will  be  to  show  that,  in  assuming  this  idea 
as  the  explanation  of  the  relation  of  Balder  to  the 
mistletoe,  I  assume  a  principle  which  is  deeply 
engraved  on  the  mind  of  primitive  man. 


§  3. — The  external  soul  in  folk-tales 

In  a  former  chapter  we  saw  that,  in  the  opinion  of 
primitive  people,  the  soul  may  temporarily  absent  itself 
from  the  body  without  causing  death.  Such  temporary 
absences  of  the  soul  are  often  believed  to  involve  con- 
siderable risk,  since  the  wandering  soul  is  liable  to  a 
variety  of  mishaps  at  the  hands  of  enemies,  and  so 
forth.  But  there  is  another  aspect  to  this  power  of 
externalising  the  soul.  If  only  the  safety  of  the  soul 
can  be  ensured  during  its  absence  from  the  body,  there 


IV  THE  EXTERNAL  SOUL  297 

is  no  reason  why  the  soul  should  not  continue  absent 
for  an  indefinite  time  ;  indeed  a  man  may,  on  a  pure 
calculation  of  personal  safety,  desire  that  his  soul  should 
never  return  to  his  body.      Unable  to  conceive  of  life 
abstractly  as  a  "  permanent  possibility  of  sensation  "  or 
a  "continuous  adjustment  of  internal  arrangements  to 
external  relations,"  the  savage  thinks  of  it  as  a  concrete 
material  thing  of  a  definite  bulk,  capable  of  being  seen 
and   handled,   kept  in   a  box  or  jar,  and  liable  to  be 
bruised,    fractured,   or  smashed   in  pieces.      It  is    not 
needful  that  the  life,  so  conceived,  should  be  in  the 
man  ;  it  may  be  absent  from  his  body  and  still  con- 
tinue to  animate  him,  by  virtue  of  a  sort  of  sympathy 
or   "  action  at  a  distance."      So  long  as    this  object 
which    he    calls    his    life    or    soul   remains    unharmed, 
the  man   is  well ;    if  it  is  injured,  he  suffers  ;    if  it  is 
destroyed,  he  dies.     Or,  to  put  it  otherwise,  when  a 
man  is  ill  or  dies,  the  fact  is  explained  by  saying  that 
the  material  object  called  his  life  or  soul,  whether  it  be 
in  his  body  or  out  of  it,  has  either  sustained  injury  or 
been  destroyed.      But  there  may  be  circumstances  in 
which,  if  the  life  or  soul  remains  in  the  man,  it  stands 
a  greater  chance  of  sustaining  injury  than  if  it  were 
stowed  away  in  some  safe  and  secret  place.     Accord- 
ingly, in  such  circumstances,  primitive  man  takes  his 
soul  out  of  his  body  and   deposits  it  for  security  in 
some  safe  place,  intending  to   replace  it  in  his  body 
when   the  danger  is  past.      Or  if  he   should   discover 
some  place  of  absolute  security,  he  may  be  content  to 
leave  his  soul  there  permanently.     The  advantage  of 
this  is  that,  so  long  as  the  soul  remains  unharmed  in 
the  place  where  he  has  deposited  it,  the  man  himself 
is  immortal  ;  nothing  can  kill  his  body,  since  his  life  is 
not  in  it. 


298  THE  EXTERNAL  SOUL  chap. 

Evidence  of  this  primitive  belief  is  furnished  by 
a  class  of  folk -tales  of  which  the  Norse  story  of 
"  The  giant  who  had  no  heart  in  his  body  "  is  perhaps 
the  best -known  example.  Stories  of  this  kind  are 
widely  diffused  over  the  world,  and  from  their  number 
and  the  variety  of  incident  and  of  details  in  which 
the  leading  idea  is  embodied,  we  may  infer  that 
the  conception  of  an  external  soul  is  one  which  has 
had  a  powerful  hold  on  the  minds  of  men  at  an  early 
stage  of  history.  For  folk-tales  are  a  faithful  reflection 
of  the  world  as  it  appeared  to  the  primitive  mind  ;  and 
we  may  be  sure  that  any  idea  which  commonly  occurs 
in  them,  however  absurd  it  may  seem  to  us,  must  once 
have  been  an  ordinary  article  of  belief.  This  assurance, 
so  far  as  it  concerns  the  supposed  power  of  externalising 
the  soul  for  a  longer  or  shorter  time,  is  amply  corrobo- 
rated by  a  comparison  of  the  folk-tales  in  question 
with  the  actual  beliefs  and  practices  of  savages.  To 
this  we  shall  return  after  some  specimens  of  the  tales 
have  been  given.  The  specimens  will  be  selected 
with  a  view  of  illustrating  both  the  characteristic 
features  and  the  wide  diffusion  of  this  class  of  tales. 

In  the  first  place,  the  story  of  the  external  soul  is 
told,  in  various  forms,  by  all  Aryan  peoples  from 
Hindustan  to  the  Hebrides.  A  very  common  form 
of  it  is  this  :  A  warlock,  giant,  or  other  fairyland 
being  is  invulnerable  and  immortal  because  he  keeps 
his  soul  hidden  far  away  in  some  secret  place  ;  but  a  fair 
princess,  whom  he  holds  enthralled  in  his  enchanted 
castle,  wiles  his  secret  from  him  and  reveals  it  to  the 
hero,  who  seeks  out  the  warlock's  soul,  heart,  life,  or 
death  (as  it  is  variously  called),  and,  by  destroying  it, 
simultaneously  kills  the  warlock.  Thus  a  Hindoo 
story   tells   how   a  magician   called    Punchkin    held    a 


IN  HINDOO  STORIES  299 


queen  captive  for  twelve  years,  and  would  fain  marry 
her,  but  she  would  not  have  him.  At  last  the  queen's 
son  came  to  rescue  her,  and  the  two  plotted  together 
to  kill  Punchkin.  So  the  queen  spoke  the  magician  fair, 
and  pretended  that  she  had  at  last  made  up  her  mind 
to  marry  him.  "  'And  do  tell  me,'  she  said,  'are  you 
quite  immortal  ?  Can  death  never  touch  you  ?  And 
are  you  too  great  an  enchanter  ever  to  feel  human 
suffering  ?'  .  .  .  '  It  is  true,'  he  said,  'that  I  am  not  as 
others.  Far,  far  away — hundreds  of  thousands  of 
miles  from  this — there  lies  a  desolate  country  covered 
with  thick  jungle.  In  the  midst  of  the  jungle  grows  a 
circle  of  palm-trees,  and  in  the  centre  of  the  circle  stand 
six  chattees  full  of  water,  piled  one  above  another  ; 
below  the  sixth  chattee  is  a  small  cage,  which  contains 
a  little  green  parrot — on  the  life  of  the  parrot  depends 
my  life — and  if  the  parrot  is  killed  I  must  die.  It  is, 
however,'  he  added,  '  impossible  that  the  parrot  should 
sustain  any  injury,  both  on  account  of  the  inaccessibility 
of  the  country,  and  because,  by  my  appointment,  many 
thousand  genii  surround  the  palm-trees,  and  kill  all 
who  approach  the  place.'  "  But  the  queen's  young 
son  overcame  all  difficulties,  and  got  possession  of 
the  parrot.  He  brought  it  to  the  door  of  the  magi- 
cian's palace,  and  began  playing  with  it.  Punchkin, 
the  magician,  saw  him,  and,  coming  out,  tried  to 
persuade  the  boy  to  give  him  the  parrot.  "  '  Give  me 
my  parrot ! '  cried  Punchkin.  Then  the  boy  took  hold 
of  the  parrot  and  tore  off  one  of  his  wings  ;  and  as  he 
did  so  the  magician's  right  arm  fell  off.  Punchkin 
then  stretched  out  his  left  arm,  crying,  *  Give  me  my 
parrot ! '  The  prince  pulled  off"  the  parrot's  second 
winpf,  and  the  magician's  left  arm  tumbled  off.  '  Give 
me  my  parrot ! '  cried  he,  and  fell  on  his  knees.     The 


300  THE  EXTERNAL  SOUL  chap. 

prince  pulled  off  the  parrot's  right  leg,  the  magician's 
right  leg  fell  off ;  the  prince  pulled  off  the  parrot's  left 
leg,  down  fell  the  magician's  left.  Nothing  remained 
of  him  except  the  lifeless  body  and  the  head  ;  but  still 
he  rolled  his  eyes,  and  cried,  *  Give  me  my  parrot ! ' 
'  Take  your  parrot,  then,'  cried  the  boy  ;  and  with  that 
he  wrung  the  bird's  neck,  and  threw  it  at  the  magician; 
and,  as  he  did  so,  Punchkin's  head  twisted  round,  and, 
with  a  fearful  groan,  he  died!"^  In  another  Hindoo 
tale  an  ogre  is  asked  by  his  daughter,  "  '  Papa,  where 
do  you  keep  your  soul  ? '  '  Sixteen  miles  away  from 
this  place,'  said  he,  '  is  a  tree.  Round  the  tree  are 
tigers,  and  bears,  and  scorpions,  and  snakes  ;  on  the 
top  of  the  tree  is  a  very  great  fat  snake  ;  on  his  head 
is  a  little  cage  ;  in  the  cage  is  a  bird  ;  and  my  soul  is 
in  that  bird.'  "  The  end  of  the  ogre  is  like  that  of  the 
magician  in  the  previous  tale.  As  the  bird's  wings 
and  legs  are  torn  off,  the  ogre's  arms  and  legs  drop 
off;  and  when  its  neck  is  wrung  he  falls  down  dead." 

In  another  Hindoo  story  a  princess  called  Sodewa 
Bai  is  born  with  a  golden  necklace  about  her  neck,  and 
the  astrologer  told  her  parents,  "This  is  no  common 
child  ;  the  necklace  of  gold  about  her  neck  contains 
your  daughter's  soul ;  let  it,  therefore,  be  guarded  with 
the  utmost  care ;  for  if  it  were  taken  off  and  worn 
by  another  person,  she  would  die."  So  her  mother 
caused  it  to  be  firmly  fastened  round  the  child's  neck, 
and,  as  soon  as  the  child  was  old  enough  to  under- 
stand, she  told  her  its  value,  and  warned  her  never  to 
let  it  be  taken  off  In  course  of  time  Sodewa  Bai  was 
married  to  a  prince  who  had  another  wife  living.     The 

1  Mary  Frere,  Old  Deccan  Days,  p.  p.  187  sq.;  Lai  Behari  Day,  Folk-tales 

12  sqq.  of  Bengal,  p.   121   sq.;  F.  A.  Steel  and 

-  Maive  Stokes,  Indian  Fairy  Tales,  R.  C.  Temple,   IVidc-aivake  Stories,  p. 

p.  58  sqq.      For  similar  stories,  see  id.  58  sqq. 


IV  IN  HINDOO  STORIES  301 

first  wife,  jealous  of  her  young  rival,  persuaded  a 
negress  to  steal  from  Sodewa  Bai  the  golden  necklace 
which  contained  her  soul.  The  negress  did  so,  and, 
as  soon  as  she  put  the  necklace  round  her  own  neck, 
Sodewa  Bai  died.  All  day  long  the  negress  used  to 
wear  the  necklace ;  but  late  at  night,  on  going  to  bed, 
she  would  take  it  off  and  put  it  by  till  morning  ;  a;nd 
whenever  she  took  it  off,  Sodewa  Bai's  soul  returned  to 
her  and  she  lived.  But  when  morning  came,  and  the 
negress  put  on  the  necklace,  Sodewa  Bai  died  again. 
At  last  the  prince  discovered  the  treachery  of  his  elder 
wife  and  restored  the  golden  necklace  to  Sodewa  Bai.^ 
In  another  Hindoo  story  a  holy  mendicant  tells  a 
queen  that  she  will  bear  a  son,  adding,  "  As  enemies 
will  try  to  take  away  the  life  of  your  son,  I  may  as 
well  tell  you  that  the  life  of  the  boy  will  be  bound  up 
in  the  life  of  a  big  boal-^sh.  which  is  in  your  tank  in 
front  of  the  palace.  In  the  heart  of  the  fish  is  a  small 
box  of  wood,  in  the  box  is  a  necklace  of  gold,  that 
necklace  is  the  life  of  your  son."  The  boy  was  born 
and  received  the  name  of  Dalim.  His  mother  was  the 
Suo  or  younger  queen.  But  the  Duo  or  elder  queen 
hated  the  child,  and  learning  the  secret  of  his  life,  she 
caused  the  boal-^sh.,  with  which  his  life  was  bound  up, 
to  be  caught.  Dalim  was  playing  near  the  tank  at  the 
time,  but  "  the  moment  the  boal-hsh.  was  caught  in  the 
net,  that  moment  Dalim  felt  unwell;  and  when  the  fish 
was  brought  up  to  land,  Dalim  fell  down  on  the  ground, 
and  made  as  if  he  was  about  to  breathe  his  last.  He 
was  immediately  taken  into  his  mother's  room,  and  the 
king  was  astonished  on  hearing  of  the  sudden  illness 
of  his  son  and  heir.  The  fish  was  by  the  order  of  the 
physician  taken  into   the  room  of  the   Duo  queen,  and 

1    Old  Deccan  Days,  p.  239  sqq. 


THE  EXTERNAL  SOUL 


as  it  lay  on  the  floor  striking  its  fins  on  the  ground, 
DaHm  in  his  mother's  room  was  given  up  for  lost. 
When  the  fish  was  cut  open,  a  casket  was  found  in  it ; 
and  in  the  casket  lay  a  necklace  of  gold.  The  moment 
the  necklace  was  worn  by  the  queen,  that  very  moment 
Dalim  died  in  his  mother's  room."  The  queen  used 
to  put  off  the  necklace  every  night,  and  whenever 
she  did  so,  the  boy  came  to  life  again.  But  every 
morning  when  the  queen  put  on  the  necklace,  he  died 
again.  ^ 

In  a  Cashmeer  story  a  lad  visits  an  old  ogress, 
pretending  to  be  her  grandson,  the  son  of  her 
daughter  who  had  married  a  king.  So  the  old  ogress 
took  him  into  her  confidence  and  showed  him  seven 
cocks,  a  spinning  wheel,  a  pigeon,  and  a  starling. 
"These  seven  cocks,"  said  she,  "contain  the  lives  of 
your  seven  uncles,  who  are  away  for  a  few  days.  Only 
as  long  as  the  cocks  live  can  your  uncles  hope  to  live  ; 
no  power  can  hurt  them  as  long  as  the  seven  cocks  are 
safe  and  sound.  The  spinning-wheel  contains  my  life; 
if  it  is  broken,  I  too  shall  be  broken,  and  must  die  ; 
but  otherwise  I  shall  live  on  for  ever.  The  pigeon 
contains  your  grandfather's  life,  and  the  starling  your 
mother's  ;  as  long  as  these  live,  nothing  can  harm  your 
grandfather  or  your  mother."  So  the  lad  killed  the 
seven  cocks  and  the  pigeon  and  the  starling,  and 
smashed  the  spinning-wheel ;  and  at  the  moment  he 
did  so  the  ogres  and  ogresses  perished.^  In  another 
story  from  Cashmeer  an  ogre  cannot  die  unless  a 
particular  pillar  in  the  verandah  of  his  palace  be 
broken.       Learning    the   secret,    a    prince    struck    the 

^  Lai  Behari  Day,  op.  cit.  p.  i  sqq.      awake  Stories,  p.  83  sqq. 
Yox   similar    stories   of  necklaces,    see  ^  j_     fj.     Knowles,     Folk  -  tales    of 

Old  Deccan  Days,  p.   233  sq.;    Wide-      Kashmir  {L.QXii.o\\,  1888),  p.  /\,^  sq. 


IV  IN  CASHMEER  STORIES  303 

pillar  again  and  again  till  it  was  broken  in  pieces. 
And  it  was  as  if  each  stroke  had  fallen  on  the  ogre, 
for  he  howled  lamentably  and  shook  like  an  aspen 
every  time  the  prince  hit  the  pillar,  until  at  last,  when 
the  pillar  fell  down,  the  ogre  also  fell  down  and  gave 
up  the  ghost.^  In  another  Cashmeer  tale  an  ogre  is 
represented  as  laughing  very  heartily  at  the  idea  that 
he  might  possibly  die.  He  said  that  "he  should  never 
die.  No  power  could  oppose  him  ;  no  years  could 
age  him  ;  he  should  remain  ever  strong  and  ever 
young,  for  the  thing  wherein  his  life  dwelt  was  most 
difficult  to  obtain."  It  was  in  a  queen  bee,  which  was 
in  a  honeycomb  on  a  tree.  But  the  bees  in  the 
honeycomb  were  many  and  fierce,  and  it  was  only 
at  the  greatest  risk  that  any  one  could  catch  the 
queen.  But  the  hero  achieved  the  enterprise  and 
crushed  the  queen  bee ;  and  immediately  the  ogre 
fell  stone  dead  to  the  ground,  so  that  the  whole  land 
trembled  with  the  shock. ^  In  some  Bengalee  tales  the 
life  of  a  whole  tribe  of  ogres  is  described  as  con- 
centrated in  two  bees.  The  secret  was  thus  revealed 
by  an  old  ogress  to  a  captive  princess  who  pretended 
to  fear  lest  the  ogress  should  die.  "  Know,  foolish 
girl,"  said  the  ogress,  "  that  we  ogres  never  die.  We 
are  not  naturally  immortal,  but  our  life  depends  on 
a  secret  which  no  human  being  can  unravel.  Let  me 
tell  you  what  it  is  that  you  may  be  comforted.  You 
know  yonder  tank  ;  there  is  in  the  middle  of  it  a 
crystal  pillar,  on  the  top  of  which  in  deep  water  are 
two  bees.  If  any  human  being  can  dive  into  the  water 
and  bring  up  the  two  bees  from  the  pillar  in  one 
breath,  and  destroy  them  so  that  not  a  drop  of  their 

^  J.  H.  Knowles,  Folk-tales  of  Kashmir  (London,  188S),  p.  134. 
^  Id.  p.  382  sqq. 


304  THE  EXTERNAL  SOUL  chap. 

blood  falls  to  the  ground,  then  we  ogres  shall  certainly 
die  ;  but  if  a  single  drop  of  blood  falls  to  the  ground, 
then  from  it  will  start  up  a  thousand  ogres.  But  what 
human  being  will  find  out  this  secret,  or,  finding  it, 
will  be  able  to  achieve  the  feat  ?  You  need  not,  there- 
fore, darling,  be  sad ;  I  am  practically  immortal." 
As  usual,  the  princess  reveals  the  secret  to  the  hero, 
who  kills  the  bees,  and  that  same  moment  all  the 
ogres  drop  down  dead,  each  on  the  spot  where  he 
happened  to  be  standing.^  In  another  Bengalee  story 
it  is  said  that  all  the  ogres  dwell  in  Ceylon,  and  that 
all  their  lives  are  in  a  single  lemon.  A  boy  cuts  the 
lemon  in  pieces,  and  all  the  ogres  die." 

In  a  Siamese  or  Cambodian  story,  probably  de- 
rived from  India,  we  are  told  that  Thossakan  or 
Ravana,  the  King  of  Ceylon,  was  able  by  magic 
art  to  take  his  soul  out  of  his  body  and  leave  it 
in  a  box  at  home,  while  he  went  to  the  wars.  Thus 
he  was  invulnerable  in  battle.  When  he  was  about 
to  give  battle  to  Rama,  he  deposited  his  soul  with 
a  hermit  called  Fire-eye,  who  was  to  keep  it  safe  for 
him.  So  in  the  fight  Rama  was  astounded  to  see  that 
his  arrows  struck  the  king  without  wounding  him. 
But  one  of  Rama's  allies,  knowing  the  secret  of 
the  king's  invulnerability,  transformed  himself  by 
magic  into  the  likeness  of  the  king,  and  going  to  the 
hermit  asked  back  his  soul.  On  receiving  it  he  soared 
up  into  the  air  and  flew  to  Rama,  brandishing  the  box 
and  squeezing  it  so  hard  that  all  the  breath  left  the 
King  of  Ceylon's  body,  and  he  died.^     In  a  Bengalee 


1  Lai  Behari  Day,  op.  cit.  p.  85  sq.,      see     Clouston,      Popular     Talcs     and 
cp.  id.  p.  253  sqq.;  India7i  Antiquary,       Fictions,  i.  350. 
i.  (1872)  117.      For  an  Indian  story  in  2  Jndian  Antiquary,  i.  171.   ' 

which  a  giant's  life  is  in  five  black  bees,  3  a.  Bastian,  Die  Volker  des  ostlichen 

Asien,  iv.  340  sq. 


IV  IN  GREEK  STORIES  305 

Story  a  prince  going  into  a  far  country  planted  with  his 
own  hands  a  tree  in  the  courtyard  of  his  father's 
palace,  and  said  to  his  parents,  "  This  tree  is  my  life. 
When  you  see  the  tree  green  and  fresh,  then  know 
that  it  is  well  with  me  ;  when  you  see  the  tree  fade  in 
some  parts,  then  know  that  I  am  in  an  ill  case  ;  and 
when  you  see  the  whole  tree  fade,  then  know  that  I 
am  dead  and  gone."^  In  another  Indian  tale  a  prince, 
setting  forth  on  his  travels,  left  behind  him  a  barley 
plant  with  instructions  that  it  should  be  carefully 
tended  and  watched,  for  if  it  flourished,  he  would  be 
alive  and  well,  but  if  it  drooped,  then  some  mischance 
was  about  to  happen  to  him.  And  so  it  fell  out.  For 
the  prince  was  beheaded,  and  as  his  head  rolled  off, 
the  barley  plant  snapped  in  two  and  the  ear  of  barley 
fell  to  the  ground.^  In  the  legend  of  the  origin  of 
Gilgit  there  figures  a  fairy  king  whose  soul  is  in  the 
snows  and  who  can  only  perish  by  fire.^ 

In  Greek  tales,  ancient  and  modern,  the  idea  of 
an  external  soul  is  not  uncommon.  When  Meleager 
was  seven  days  old,  the  Fates  appeared  to  his  mother 
and  told  her  that  Meleager  would  die  when  the  brand 
which  was  blazing  on  the  hearth  had  burnt  down.  So 
his  mother  snatched  the  brand  from  the  fire  and  kept 
it  in  a  box.  But  in  after  years,  being  enraged  at  her 
son  for  slaying  her  brothers,  she  burnt  the  brand  in 
the  fire  and  Meleager  at  once  expired."^  Again,  Nisus 
King  of  Megara,  had  a  purple  or  golden  hair  on  the 
middle  of  his  head,  and  it  was  fated  that  whenever 
the  hair  was  pulled  out  the  king  should  die.  When 
Megara   was    besieged    by    the    Cretans,    the    king's 

1  Lai  Behari  Day,  op.  cit.  p.  189.  *  ApoUodorus,    i.    8  ;  Diodorus,   iv. 

2  Wide-awake  Stories,  i^"^.  52,  64.  34;   Pausanias,    x.    31,    4;  Aeschylus, 
^  G.  W.  Leitner,  The  Languages  and      Choeph.  do^  sqq. 

Races  of  Dardistan,  p.  9. 

VOL.   II  X 


3o6  THE  EXTERNAL  SOUL  chap. 

daughter  Scylla  fell  in  love  with  Minos,  their  King, 
and  pulled  out  the  fatal  hair  from  her  father's  head. 
So  he  died.^  Similarly  Poseidon  made  Pterelaus 
immortal  by  giving  him  a  golden  hair  on  his  head. 
But  when  Taphos,  the  home  of  Pterelaus,  was  be- 
sieged by  Amphitryon,  the  daughter  of  Pterelaus  fell 
in  love  with  Amphitryon  and  killed  her  father  by 
plucking  out  the  golden  hair  with  which  his  life  was 
bound  up."  In  a  modern  Greek  folk-tale  a  man's 
strength  lies  in  three  golden  hairs  on  his  head.  When 
his  mother  pulls  them  out,  he  grows  weak  and  timid 
and  is  slain  by  his  enemies.^  In  another  modern 
Greek  story  the  life  of  an  enchanter  is  bound  up  with 
three  doves  which  are  in  the  belly  of  a  wild  boar. 
When  the  first  dove  is  killed,  the  magician  grows  sick, 
when  the  second  is  killed,  he  grows  very  sick,  and 
when  the  third  is  killed,  he  dies.^  In  another  Greek 
story  of  the  same  sort  an  ogre's  strength  is  in  three 
singing  birds  which  are  in  a  wild  boar.  The  hero 
kills  two  of  the  birds,  and  then  coming  to  the  ogre's 
house  finds  him  lying  on  the  ground  in  great  pain. 
He  shows  the  third  bird  to  the  ogre,  who  begs  that  the 
hero  will  either  let  it  fly  away  or  give  it  to  him  to  eat. 
But  the  hero  wrings  the  bird's  neck  and  the  ogre  dies 
on   the   spot.^      In   a  variant  of  the   latter  story  the 


^  Apollodorus,  iii.  15,  8;  Aeschylus,  esische  Mdrchen,   i.    p.  217  ;   a  similar 

Choeph.    612  sqq.  ;     Paiisanias,    i.    19,  story,  id.  ii.  p.  282. 

4.       According   to   Tzetzes   (Schol.    on  *  Hahn,  op.  cil.  ii.  p.  215  sq. 

Lycophron,   650)    not    the    life  but  the  ^  Id.  ii.  p.  275  sq.       Similar  stories, 

strength  of  Nisus   was   in    his    golden  id.  ii.  pp.  204,  294  sq.     In  an  Albanian 

hair  ;  when  it  was  pulled  out,  he  became  story  a   monster's  strength  is  in  three 

weak  and  was  slain  by  Minos.      Accord-  pigeons,  which  are   in   a  hare,  which  is 

ing   to  Hyginus  (Fab.   198)   Nisus  was  in  the  silver  tusk  of  a  wild  boar.      When 

destined  to  reign  only  so  long  as  he  kept  the  boar  is  killed,  the  monster  feels  ill  ; 

the  purple  lock  on  his  head.  when  the  hare  is  cut  open,  he  can  hardly 

9    .      ,,    ,  •■         es  „    _  stand  on  his  feet ;  when  the  three  pieeons 

■=  Apollodorus,  11.  4,  §§  <;,  7.  ,-,,,,•  ,>  ^5 

'  -^  are  killed,  he  expires.      Dozon,  Lojites 

3   Ifahn,     Griechische     und     Alban-  albanais,  p.  132  sq. 


IV  IN  GREEK  STORIES  307 

monster's  strencrth  is  in  two  doves,  and  when  the  hero 
kills  one  of  them,  the  monster  cries  out,  "  Ah,  woe  is 
me !  Half  my  life  is  gone.  Something  must  have 
happened  to  one  of  the  doves."  When  the  second  dove 
is  killed,  he  dies.^  In  another  Greek  story  the  incidents 
of  the  three  golden  hairs  and  the  three  doves  are 
artificially  combined.  A  monster  has  three  golden 
hairs  on  his  head  which  open  the  door  of  a  chamber 
in  which  are  three  doves ;  when  the  first  dove  is 
killed,  the  monster  grows  sick,  when  the  second  is 
killed,  he  grows  worse,  and  when  the  third  is  killed, 
he  dies.^  In  another  Greek  tale  an  old  man's  strength 
is  in  a  ten-headed  serpent.  When  the  serpent's  heads 
are  being  cut  off,  he  feels  unwell,  and  when  the  last 
head  is  struck  off,  he  expires.^  In  another  Greek 
story  a  dervish  tells  a  queen  that  she  will  have  three 
sons,  that  at  the  birth  of  each  she  must  plant  a 
pumpkin  in  the  garden,  and  that  in  the  fruit  borne  by 
the  pumpkins  will  reside  the  strength  of  the  children. 
In  due  time  the  infants  are  born  and  the  pumpkins 
planted.  As  the  children  grow  up  the  pumpkins 
grow  with  them.  One  morning  the  eldest  son  feels 
sick,  and  on  going  into  the  garden  they  find  that  the 
largest  pumpkin  is  gone.  Next  night  the  second 
son  keeps  watch  in  a  summer-house  in  the  garden.  At 
midnight  a  negro  appears  and  cuts  the  second  pump- 
kin. At  once  the  boy's  strength  goes  out  of  him  and 
he  is  unable  to  pursue  the  negro.  The  youngest 
son,  however,  succeeds  in  slaying  the  negro  and 
recovering  the  lost  pumpkins.'* 

Ancient  Italian  legend  furnishes  a  close  parallel  to 
the  Greek  story  of  Meleager.     Silvia,  the  young  wife 

i   Hahn,  op.  cit.  ii.  p.  260  sqq.  ~  Id.  i.  p.   187.  ^  Id.  ii.  p.  23  sq, 

*  Legrand,  Contes  populaires  grecs,  p.   191  sqq. 


3o8  THE  EXTERNAL  SOUL  chap. 

of  Septimius  Marcellus,  had  a  child  by  the  god  Mars. 
The  god  gave  her  a  spear,  with  which  he  said  that 
the  fate  of  the  child  would  be  bound  up.  When  the 
boy  grew  up  he  quarrelled  with  his  maternal  uncles 
and  slew  them.  So  in  revenge  his  mother  burned  the 
spear  on  which  his  life  depended.^  In  one  of  the 
stories  of  the  Pentamerone  a  certain  queen  has  a  twin 
brother,  a  dragon.  The  astrologers  declared  at  her 
birth  that  she  would  live  just  as  long  as  the  dragon 
and  no  longer,  the  death  of  the  one  involving  the 
death  of  the  other.  If  the  dragon  were  killed,  the 
only  way  to  restore  the  queen  to  life  would  be  to 
smear  her  temples,  breast,  pulses,  and  nostrils  with 
the  blood  of  the  dragon.-  In  a  modern  Roman 
version  of  "Aladdin  and  the  Wonderful  Lamp,"  the 
magician  tells  the  princess  whom  he  holds  captive 
in  a  floating  rock  in  mid -ocean  that  he  will  never 
die.  The  princess  reports  this  to  the  prince  her 
husband,  who  has  come  to  rescue  her.  The  prince 
replies,  "It  is  impossible  but  that  there  should  be 
some  one  thing  or  other  that  is  fatal  to  him  ;  ask  him 
what  that  one  fatal  thing  is."  So  the  princess  asked 
the  magician  and  he  told  her  that  in  the  wood  was  a 
hydra  with  seven  heads  ;  in  the  middle  head  of  the 
hydra  was  a  leveret,  in  the  head  of  the  leveret  was 
a  bird,  in  the  bird's  head  was  a  precious  stone,  and 
if  this  stone  were  put  under  his  pillow  he  would  die. 
The  prince  procured  the  stone  and  the  princess  laid 
it  under  the  magician's  pillow.  No  sooner  did  the 
enchanter  lay  his   head   on   the   pillow  than   he   gave 


1  Plutarch,    Parallela,  26.      In  both  the  nephew  presented  to  his  lady-love 

the   Greek  and   Italian  stories  the  sub-  and  which  his  uncles  took  from  her. 
ject    of   quarrel   between   nejihew    and  2  Basile,  renta»ic?-one,   ii.  p.  60   sq. 

uncles   is   the   skin    of  a    boar,    which  (Liebrecht's  German  trans.) 


IN  SLA  VONIC  STORIES  309 


three  terrible  yells,  turned   himself  round   and  round 
three  times,  and  died/ 

Stories  of  the  same  sort  are  current  among 
Slavonic  peoples.  Thus  in  a  Russian  tale  a  warlock 
called  Koshchei  the  Deathless  is  asked  where  his 
death  is,  "  My  death,"  he  answered,  "  is  in  such  and 
such  a  place.  There  stands  an  oak,  and  under  the 
oak  is  a  casket,  and  in  the  casket  is  a  hare,  and  in  the 
hare  is  a  duck,  and  in  the  duck  is  an  egg,  and  in  the 
^gg  is  my  death."  A  prince  obtained  the  ^g^  and 
squeezed  it,  whereupon  Koshchei  the  Deathless  bent 
double.  But  when  the  prince  shivered  the  Q.g'g  in 
pieces,  the  warlock  died.-  "In  one  of  the  descriptions 
of  Koshchei's  death,  he  is  said  to  be  killed  by  a  blow 
on  the  forehead  inflicted  by  the  mysterious  ^g<g — that 
last  link  in  the  magic  chain  by  which  his  life  is  darkly 
bound.  In  another  version  of  the  same  story,  but  told 
of  a  snake,  the  fatal  blow  is  struck  by  a  small  stone 
found  in  the  yolk  of  an  ^gg,  which  is  inside  a  duck, 
which  is  inside  a  hare,  which  is  inside  a  stone,  which 
is  on  an  island."^  In  another  variant  the  prince 
shifts  the  fatal  ^<gg  from  one  hand  to  the  other,  and  as 
he  does  so  Koshchei  rushes  wildly  from  side  to  side 
of  the  room.  At  last  the  prince  smashes  the  ^gg,  and 
Koshchei  drops  dead.*  In  another  Russian  story  the 
death  of  an  enchantress  is  in  a  blue  rose-tree  in  a  blue 
forest.  Prince  Ivan  uproots  the  rose-tree,  whereupon 
the  enchantress  straightway  sickens.  He  brings  the 
rose-tree  to  her  house  and  finds  her  at  the  point  of 
death.  Then  he  throws  it  into  the  cellar,  crying, 
"  Behold  her  death  !  "  and  at  once  the  whole  building 

1  R.  H.  Busk,  Folk-lore  of  Rome,  p.       103  sq.;  so  Dietrich,  Russian  Popular 
164  sqq.  Tales,  p.  23  sq. 

-  Ralston,    Russian    Folk -tales,    p.  ^  Ralston,  c/.  cit.  p.  109.  •*  Il>. 


3IO  THE  EXTERNAL  SOUL  cuAr. 

shakes,  "and  becomes  an  island,  on  which  are  people 
who  had  been  sitting  in  Hell,  and  who  offer  up  thanks 
to  Prince  Ivan."^  In  another  Russian  story  a  prince 
is  grievously  tormented  by  a  witch  who  has  got  hold 
of  his  heart,  and  keeps  it  seething  in  a  magic  cauldron.- 
In  a  Bohemian  tale  a  warlock's  strength  lies  in  an 
^gg,  which  is  in  a  duck,  which  is  in  a  stag,  which  is 
under  a  tree.  A  seer  finds  the  ^gg  and  sucks  it. 
Then  the  warlock  grows  as  weak  as  a  child,  "  for  all 
his  strength  had  passed  into  the  seer.""  In  a  Serbian 
story  a  fabulous  being  called  True  Steel  declares, 
"  Far  away  from  this  place  there  is  a  very  high 
mountain,  in  the  mountain  there  is  a  fox,  in  the  fox 
there  is  a  heart,  in  the  heart  there  is  a  bird,  and  in 
this  bird  is  my  strength."  The  fox  is  caught  and 
killed  and  its  heart  is  taken  out.  Out  of  the  fox's 
heart  is  taken  the  bird,  which  is  then  burnt,  and  that 
very  moment  True  Steel  falls  dead.^  In  a  South 
Slavonian  story  a  dragon  tells  an  old  woman,  "  My 
strength  is  a  long  way  off,  and  you  cannot  go  thither. 
Far  in  another  empire  under  the  emperor's  city  is  a 
lake,  in  that  lake  is  a  dragon,  and  in  the  dragon  a 
boar,  and  in  the  boar  a  pigeon,  and  in  that  is  my 
strength."  ^ 

Amongst  peoples  of  the  Teutonic  stock  stories  of 
the  external  soul  are  not  wanting.  In  a  tale  told  by 
the  Saxons  of  Transylvania  it  is  said  that  a  young 
man  shot  at  a  witch  again  and  again.  The  bullets 
went  clean  through  her  but  did  her  no  harm,  and  she 
only  laughed  and  mocked  at  him.     "  Silly  earthworm," 

^  Ralston,    Russian     Folk -tales,    p.  F.  S.  Krauss,  Sagen  nnd  Mdrchen  der 

113  si],  Siidslaven,  i.  (No.  34)  p.  168  sq. 

2  Id.,  p.  114.                  3  Id.,  p.  no.  *  A.   H.  Wratislaw,  Sixty  Folk-tales 

■*  Mijatovics,      Serbian      Folk  -  lore,  from       exclusively      Slavonic      sources 

edited  by  the  Rev.  W.  Denton,  p.  172;  (London,  1889),  p.  225. 


IV  IN  GERMAN  STORIES  311 

she  cried,  "  shoot  as  much  as  you  Hke,      It  does  me  no 
harm.      For  know  that  my  Hfe  resides  not  in  me  but 
far,  far  away.      In  a  mountain  is  a  pond,  on  the  pond 
swims  a  duck,  in  the  duck  is  an  ^g^,  in  the  ^gg  burns 
a  light,  that  light  is  my  life.      If  you  could  put  out  that 
light,  my  life  would  be  at  an  end.     But  that  can  never, 
never  be."     However,  the  young  man  got  hold  of  the 
^g<g,  smashed  it,  and  put  out  the  light,  and  with  it  the 
witch's   life    went    out    also.^      In   a   German    story    a 
cannibal  called  Soulless  keeps  his  soul  in  a  box,  which 
stands  on  a  rock  in  the  middle  of  the  Red  Sea.      A 
soldier  gets  possession  of  the  box  and  goes  with  it  to 
Soulless,   who  begs  the  soldier  to  give  him  back  his 
soul.      But   the  soldier  opens  the  box,   takes   out  the 
soul,   and  flings  it  backward  over  his   head.      At  the 
same  moment  the  cannibal  drops  down  stone  dead.' 
In  an  Oldenburg  story  a  king  has  three  sons  and  a 
daughter,  and  for  each  child  there  grows  a  flower  in 
the    king's    garden.       Each    of   the    flowers    is    a   life 
flower  ;  it  blooms  and  flourishes  while  the  child  lives, 
but  when  the  child  dies  it  withers  away.^      In  another 
German  story  an  old  warlock  lives  with  a  damsel  all 
alone  in  the  midst  of  a  vast  and  gloomy  wood.      She 
fears  that  being  old  he  may  die  and  leave  her  alone  in 
the  forest.      But  he  reassures  her.      "  Dear  child,"  he 
said,  "  I  cannot  die,  and  I  have  no  heart  in  my  breast." 
But  she  importuned  him  to  tell  her  where  his  heart  was. 
So  he  said,   "  Far,   far  from  here  in  an  unknown  and 
lonesome  land  stands  a  great  church.      The  church  is 
well  secured  with  iron  doors,  and  round  about  it  flows 


1   Haltrich,    Deutsche     Volksindrchen  -  ].V\^.\^o\i,  Deutsche  Mcirchemiiid 

aus  dent  Sachsenlande  in  Siebenbiirgen,^      Sagen,  No.  20,  p.  87  sqq. 
No.    34   (No.    33   of  the   first   ed. ),   p.  ^  SiYa.c'keT]a.n,  Jberg/aube  uud  Sageu 

149  sc/.  aus    devi    Herzogthum     Oldenburg,    ii. 

p.  306  sq. 


312  THE  EXTERNAL  SOUL  chap. 

a  broad  deep  moat.  In  the  church  flies  a  bird  and  in 
the  bird  is  my  heart.  So  long  as  that  bird  Hves,  I  hve. 
It  cannot  die  of  itself,  and  no  one  can  catch  it ;  there- 
fore I  cannot  die,  and  you  need  have  no  anxiety." 
However  the  young  man,  whose  bride  the  damsel  was 
to  have  been  before  the  warlock  spirited  her  away, 
contrived  to  reach  the  church  and  catch  the  bird.  He 
brought  it  to  the  damsel,  who  stowed  him  and  it  away 
under  the  warlock's  bed.  Soon  the  old  warlock  came 
home.  He  was  ailing,  and  said  so.  The  girl  wept 
and  said,  "Alas,  daddy  is  dying  ;  he  has  a  heart  in  his 
breast  after  all."  "  Child,"  replied  the  warlock,  ''hold 
your  tongue.  I  cajit  die.  It  will  soon  pass  over." 
At  that  the  young  man  under  the  bed  gave  the  bird  a 
gentle  squeeze  ;  and  as  he  did  so,  the  old  warlock  felt 
very  unwell  and  sat  down.  Then  the  young  man 
gripped  the  bird  tighter,  and  the  warlock  fell  senseless 
from  his  chair.  "  Now  squeeze  him  dead,"  cried  the 
damsel.  Her  lover  obeyed,  and  when  the  bird  was 
dead,  the  old  warlock  also  lay  dead  on  the  floor.^ 

In  the  Norse  tale  of  "  the  giant  who  had  no  heart 
in  his  body,"  the  giant  tells  the  captive  princess,  "  Far, 
far  away  in  a  lake  lies  an  island,  on  that  island  stands 
a  church,  in  that  church  is  a  well,  in  that  well  swims  a 
duck,  in  that  duck  there  is  an  o^^g,  and  in  that  &gg  there 
lies  my  heart."  The  hero  of  the  tale  obtains  the  esfe 
and  squeezes  it,  at  which  the  giant  screams  piteously 
and  begs  for  his  life.  But  the  hero  breaks  the  egg  in 
pieces  and  the  giant  at  once  bursts."  In  another  Norse 
story  a  hill-ogre  tells  the  captive  princess  that  she  will 
never  be   able  to  return   home  unless    she   finds   the 


1  K.  Mullenhoff,6'a;^(?«,J/rt;Y//f«  ?/;/(/  2  Asbjornsen  og  Moe,  Norske  Folke- 

Lieder    der    Herzogthiitner    Schleswig-      Eventyr,    No.    36  ;     Dasent,    Popular 
Ilohtein  und  Laiienbitrg,  p.  404  sqq.  Talcs  from  the  Norse,  p.  55  sqq. 


IV  IN  NORSE  STORIES  3i3 

grain  of  sand  which  lies  under  the  ninth  tongue  of  the 
ninth  head  of  a  certain  dragon  ;  but  if  that  grain  of 
sand  were  to  come  over  the  rock  in  which  the  ogres  hve, 
they  would  all  burst  "  and  the  rock  itself  would  become 
a  gilded  palace,  and  the  lake  green  meadows."  The 
hero  finds  the  grain  of  sand  and  takes  it  to  the  top  of 
the  high  rock  in  which  the  ogres  live.  So  all  the  ogres 
burst  and  the  rest  falls  out  as  one  of  the  ogres  had 
foretold.^  In  an  Icelandic  parallel  to  the  story  of 
Meleager,  the  spae-wives  or  sybils  come  and  foretell 
the  high  destiny  of  the  infant  Gestr  as  he  lies  in  his 
cradle.  Two  candles  were  burning  beside  the  child, 
and  the  youngest  of  the  spae-wives,  conceiving  herself 
slighted,  cried  out,  "  I  foretell  that  the  child  shall  live 
no  longer  than  this  candle  burns."  Whereupon  the 
chief  sybil  put  out  the  candle  and  gave  it  to  Gestr's 
mother  to  keep,  charging  her  not  to  light  it  again 
until  her  son  should  wish  to  die.  Gestr  lived  three 
hundred  years ;  then  he  kindled  the  candle  and 
expired.^ 

In  a  Celtic  tale  a  giant  says,  "There  is  a  great 
flagstone  under  the  threshold.  There  is  a  wether 
under  the  flag.  There  is  a  duck  in  the  wether's  belly, 
and  an  ^gg  in  the  belly  of  the  duck,  and  it  is  in  the  ^gg 
that  my  soul  is."  The  ^gg  is  crushed,  and  the  giant 
falls  down  dead.^  In  another  Celtic  tale,  a  sea  beast 
has  carried  off  a  king's  daughter,  and  an  old  smith 
declares  that  there  is  no  way  of  killing  the  beast  but 
one.  "  In  the  island  that  is  in  the  midst  of  the  loch 
is    Eillid   Chaisthion — the   white -footed    hind,   of  the 


^  Asbjornsen  og  Moe,  Norske  Folke-  ^  Mannhardt,   Gertna7iische  Mythen, 

Eventyr,  Ny  Samling,  No.  70  ;  Dasent,       p.    592  ;  Jamieson,    Dictionaiy  of  the 
Tales  from  the  Fjeld,  p.  229  ("Boots      Scottish  Language,  s.v.  "Yule." 
and  the  Beasts.")  ^  J.  F.  Campbell,  Popular  Tales  of 

the  J  Vest  Highlands,  i.  p.   10  sq. 


314  THE  EXTERNAL  SOUL  IN  chap. 

slenderest  legs,  and  the  swiftest  step,  and,  though  she 
should  be  caught,  there  would  spring  a  hoodie  out  of 
her,  and  though  the  hoodie  should  be  caught,  there 
would  spring  a  trout  out  of  her,  but  there  is  an  ^gg  in 
the  mouth  of  the  trout,  and  the  soul  of  the  beast  is  in 
the  &gg,  and  if  the  (zgg  breaks,  the  beast  is  dead."  As 
usual  the  egg  is  broken  and  the  beast  dies.^  In  a 
Breton  story  there  figures  a  giant  whom  neither  fire 
nor  water  nor  steel  can  harm.  He  tells  a  princess 
whom  he  has  just  married,  "  I  am  immortal,  and  no 
one  can  hurt  me,  unless  he  crushes  on  my  breast  an 
Qgg  which  is  in  a  pigeon,  which  is  in  the  belly  of  a 
hare  ;  this  hare  is  in  the  belly  of  a  wolf,  and  this  wolf 
is  in  the  belly  of  my  brother,  who  dwells  a  thousand 
leagues  from  here.  So  I  am  quite  easy  on  that  score." 
A  soldier  gets  the  egg  and  crushes  it  on  the  breast  of 
the  giant,  who  immediately  expires.^  In  another 
Breton  tale  a  giant  is  called  Body-without-Soul  because 
his  life  does  not  reside  in  his  body.  It  resides  in  an 
egg,  the  egg  is  in  a  dove,  the  dove  is  in  a  hare,  the 
hare  is  in  a  wolf,  and  the  wolf  is  in  an  iron  chest  at  the 
bottom  of  the  sea.  The  hero  kills  the  animals  one 
after  another,  and  at  the  death  of  each  animal  the 
giant  grows  weaker,  as  if  he  had  lost  a  limb.  When  at 
last  the  hero  comes  to  the  Qriant's  castle  bearing  the 
egg  in  his  hand,  he  finds  Body-without-Soul  stretched 
on  his  bed  at  the  point  of  death.  So  he  dashes  the 
egg  against  the  giant's  forehead,  the  egg  breaks,  and 
the  giant  straightway  dies.^ 

The  notion  of  an  external  soul  has  now  been  traced 
in    folk  -  tales   told   by    Aryan   peoples   from    India   to 

1  J.    V.  Campbell,  Popular   Tales  of  "^  Y.  M.  Luzel,    Contes  populaires  de 

the  West  Highlands,  i.  p.  ^o  sqq.  Basse- Bret agne  (Paris,    1887),   i.    445- 

'^  Sebillot,    Contes   populaires    de   la  449. 
Haute- Bretagne  (Paris,  1 885),  p.  63  S(j(j. 


AN  EG  yP  TIAN  STOR  V  3 '  5 


Brittany  and   the   Hebrides.     We  have  still  to   show 
that  the  same  idea  occurs  commonly  in  the   popular 
stories   of  non- Aryan   peoples.       In   the  first  place   it 
appears  in  the  ancient   Egyptian  story  of  "  The  Two 
Brothers."     This  story  was  written  down  in  the  reign 
of  Rameses  II,  about  1300  years  B.C.      It  is  therefore 
older  than  our  present  redaction  of  Homer,  and  far  older 
than  the  Bible.     The  oudine  of  the  story,  so  far  as  it 
concerns  us  here,  is  as  follows  :  Once  upon  a  time  there 
were  two  brethren  ;  the  name  of  the  elder  was  Anupu 
and  the  name  of  the  younger  was  Bitiu.      Now  Anupu 
had  a  house  and  a  wife,  and  his  younger  brother  dwelt 
with  him  as  his  servant.      It  was  Anupu  who  made  the 
garments,  and  every  morning  when  it  grew  light  he 
drove  the  kine  afield.     As  he  walked  behind  them  they 
used  to  say  to  him,  "  The  grass  is  good  in  such  and  such 
a  place,"  and  he  heard  what  they  said  and  led  them  to 
the  good  pasture  that  they  desired.     So  his  kine  grew 
very  sleek  and  multiplied  greatly.     One  day  when  the 
two  brothers  were  at  work  in  the  field  the  elder  brother 
said  to  the  younger,   "  Run   and  fetch  seed  from  the 
village."     So  the  younger  brother  ran  and  said  to  the 
wife  of  his  elder  brother,  "  Give  me  seed  that  I  may 
run  to  the  field,  for  my  brother  sent  me  saying,  tarry 
not."     She  said,  "  Go  to  the  barn  and  take  as  much  as 
you  desire."      He  went  and  filled  a  jar  full  of  wheat 
and  barley,  and  came  forth  bearing  it  on  his  shoulders. 
When  the  woman  saw  him  her  heart  went  out  to  him, 
and  she  laid  hold  of  him  and  said,  "  Come,  let  us  rest 
an   hour  too-ether."      But  he  said,   "Thou  art   to  me 
as  a  mother,  and  my  brother  is  to  me  as  a  father."      So 
he  would  not  hearken  to  her,  but  took  the  load  on  his 
back   and  went  away  to  the  field.      In  the   evening, 
when  the  elder  brother  was  returning  from  the  field, 


3i6  THE  EXTERNAL  SOUL  IN  chap. 

his  wife  feared  for  what  she  had  said.  So  she  took 
soot  and  made  herself  as  one  who  has  been  beaten. 
And  when  her  husband  came  home,  she  said,  "When 
thy  younger  brother  came  to  fetch  seed,  he  said  to  me, 
Come,  let  us  rest  an  hour  together.  But  I  would  not, 
and  he  beat  me."  Then  the  elder  brother  became  like 
a  panther  of  the  south  ;  he  sharpened  his  knife  and 
stood  behind  the  door  of  the  cow-house.  And  when 
the  sun  set  and  the  younger  brother  came  laden 
with  all  the  herbs  of  the  field,  as  was  his  wont  every 
day,  the  cow  that  walked  in  front  of  the  herd  said  to 
him,  "  Behold,  thy  elder  brother  stands  with  a  knife  to 
kill  thee.  Flee  before  him."  When  he  heard  what 
the  cow  said,  he  looked  under  the  door  of  the  cow-house 
and  saw  the  feet  of  his  elder  brother  standinof  behind 
the  door,  his  knife  in  his  hand.  So  he  fled  and  his 
brother  pursued  him  with  the  knife.  But  the  younger 
brother  cried  for  help  to  the  Sun,  and  the  Sun  heard 
him  and  caused  a  great  water  to  spring  up  between 
him  and  his  elder  brother,  and  the  water  was  full  of 
crocodiles.  The  two  brothers  stood,  the  one  on  the 
one  side  of  the  water  and  the  other  on  the  other,  and 
the  younger  brother  told  the  elder  brother  all  that  had 
befallen.  So  the  elder  brother  repented  him  of  what 
he  had  done  and  he  wept  aloud.  But  he  could  not 
come  at  the  farther  bank  by  reason  of  the  crocodiles. 
His  younger  brother  called  to  him  and  said,  "  Go  home 
and  tend  the  cattle  thyself  For  I  will  dwell  no  more 
in  the  place  where  thou  art.  I  will  go  to  the  Valley  of 
the  Acacia.  But  this  is  what  thou  shalt  do  for  me. 
Thou  shalt  come  and  care  for  me,  if  evil  befalls  me,  for 
I  will  enchant  my  heart  and  place  it  on  the  top  of  the 
flower  of  the  Acacia  ;  and  if  they  cut  the  Acacia  and 
my  heart  falls  to  the  ground,  thou  shalt  come  and  seek 


IV  AN  EGYPTIAN  STORY  317 

it,  and  when  thou  hast  found  it  thou  shalt  lay  it  in  a 
vessel  of  fresh  water.  Then  I  shall  come  to  life  again. 
But  this  is  the  sign  that  evil  has  befallen  me  ;  the  pot 
of  beer  in  thine  hand  shall  bubble."  So  he  went  away 
to  the  Valley  of  the  Acacia,  but  his  brother  returned 
home  with  dust  on  his  head  and  slew  his  wife  and  cast 
her  to  the  dogs. 

For    many  days   afterwards   the    younger    brother 

dwelt    alone    in    the   Valley  of   the   Acacia.      By  day 

he  hunted  the  beasts  of  the  field,  but  at  evening  he 

came  and  laid   him    down  under  the  Acacia,  on  the 

top  of  whose  flower  was  his  heart.     And  many  days 

after  that  he  built  himself  a  house  in  the  Valley  of  the 

Acacia.      But  the  gods  were  grieved  for  him  ;  and  the 

Sun  said  to   Khnum,  "  Make  a  wife  for  Bitiu,  that  he 

may  not  dwell  alone."     So  Khnum  made  him  a  woman 

to  dwell  with  him,  who  was  perfect  in  her  limbs  more 

than  any  woman  on  earth,  for  all  the  gods  were  in  her. 

So  she  dwelt  with  him.      But  one  day  a  lock  of  her 

hair  fell  into  the  river  and  floated  down  to  the  land  of 

Egypt,  to  the  house  of  Pharaoh's  washerwomen.     The 

fragrance  of  the  lock  perfumed  Pharaoh's  raiment,  and 

the  washerwomen  were  blamed,  for  it  was  said,  "  An 

odour  of  perfume  in  the  garments  of  Pharaoh  ! "     So 

the  heart  of  Pharaoh's  chief  washerman  was  weary  of 

the  complaints  that  were  made  every  day,  and  he  went 

to  the  quay,  and  there  in  the  water  he  saw  the  lock  of 

hair.      He  sent  one  down  into  the  river  to  fetch  it,  and, 

because  it  smelt  sweetly,  he  took  it  to  Pharaoh.     Then 

Pharaoh's  magicians  were  sent  for  and  they  said,  "This 

lock  of  hair  belongs  to  a  daughter  of  the  Sun,  who  has 

in  her  the  essence  of  all  the  gods.      Let  messengers  go 

forth  to  all  foreign  lands  to  seek  her."     So  the  woman 

was  brought  from  the  Valley  of  the  Acacia  with  chariots 


3i8  THE  EXTERNAL  SOUL  chap. 

and  archers  and  much  company,  and  all  the  land  of 
Egypt  rejoiced  at  her  coming,  and  Pharaoh  loved  her. 
But  when  they  asked  her  of  her  husband,  she  said  to 
Pharaoh,  "  Let  them  cut  down  the  Acacia  and  let  them 
destroy  him."  So  men  were  sent  with  tools  to  cut 
down  the  Acacia.  They  came  to  it  and  cut  the  flower 
upon  which  was  the  heart  of  Bitiu  ;  and  he  fell  down 
dead  in  that  evil  hour.  But  the  next  day,  when  the 
elder  brother  of  Bitiu  was  entered  into  his  house  and 
had  sat  down,  they  brought  him  a  pot  of  beer  and  it 
bubbled,  and  they  gave  him  a  jug  of  wine  and  it  grew 
turbid.  Then  he  took  his  staff  and  his  sandals  and 
hied  him  to  the  Valley  of  the  Acacia,  and  there  he  found 
his  younger  brother  lying  dead  in  his  house.  So  he 
sought  for  the  heart  of  his  brother  under  the  Acacia. 
For  three  years  he  sought  in  vain,  but  in  the  fourth 
year  he  found  it  in  the  berry  of  the  Acacia.  So  he 
threw  the  heart  into  a  cup  of  fresh  water.  And  when 
it  was  night  and  the  heart  had  sucked  in  much  water, 
Bitiu  shook  in  all  his  limbs  and  revived.  Then  he 
drank  the  cup  of  water  in  which  his  heart  was,  and  his 
heart  went  into  its  place,  and  he  lived  as  before.^ 

In  the  story  of  Seyf-el-Mulook  in  the  Arabian 
Nights,  the  Jinnee  declares,  "When  I  was  born,  the 
astrologers  declared  that  the  destruction  of  my  soul 
would  be  effected  by  the  hand  of  one  of  the  sons  of  the 
human  kings.  I  therefore  took  my  soul,  and  put  it 
into  the  crop  of  a  sparrow,  and  I  imprisoned  the  sparrow 
in  a  little  box,  and  put  this  into  another  small  box,  and 
this  I  put  within  seven  other  small  boxes,  and  I  put 
these  within  seven  chests,  and  the  chests  I  put  into  a 
coffer  of  marble  within  the  verge  of  this  circumambient 
ocean  ;  for  this  part  is  remote  from  the  countries  of 

1  Maspero,  Contes  populaires  de  VEgypte  amienne  (Paris,  1882),  p.  5  sqq. 


IV  IN  ARABIAN  STORIES  3^9 

mankind,  and  none  of  mankind  can  gain  access  to  it." 
But  Seyf-el-Mulook  got  possession  of  the  sparrow  and 
strangled  it,  and  the  Jinnee  fell  upon  the  ground  a 
heap  of  black  ashes.^  In  a  modern  Arabian  tale  a 
king  marries  an  ogress,  who  puts  out  the  eyes  of  the 
king's  forty  wives.  One  of  the  blinded  queens  gives 
birth  to  a  son  whom  she  names  Mohammed  the  Prudent. 
But  the  ogress  queen  hated  him  and  compassed  his 
death.  So  she  sent  him  on  an  errand  to  the  house  of 
her  kinsfolk  the  ogres.  In  the  house  of  the  ogres  he 
saw  some  things  hanging  from  the  roof,  and  on  asking 
a  female  slave  what  they  were,  she  said,  "  That  is  the 
•bottle  which  contains  the  life  of  my  lady  the  queen, 
and  the  other  bottle  beside  it  contains  the  eyes  of  the 
queens  whom  my  mistress  blinded."  A  little  after- 
wards he  spied  a  beetle  and  rose  to  kill  it.  "  Don't 
kill  it,"  cried  the  slave,  "for  that  is  my  life."  But 
Mohammed  the  Prudent  watched  the  beetle  till  it 
ent»ered  a  chink  in  the  wall ;  and  when  the  female  slave 
had  fallen  asleep,  he  killed  the  beetle  in  its  hole,  and  so 
the  slave  died.  Then  Mohammed  took  down  the  two 
bottles  and  carried  them  home  to  his  father's  palace. 
There  he  presented  himself  before  the  ogress  queen 
and  said,  "  See,  I  have  your  life  in  my  hand,  but  I  will 
not  kill  you  till  you  have  replaced  the  eyes  which  you 
took  from  the  forty  queens."  The  ogress  did  as  she 
was  bid,  and  then  Mohammed  the  Prudent  said, 
"  There,  take  your  life."  But  the  bottle  slipped  from 
his  hand  and  fell,  the  life  of  the  ogress  escaped  from 
it,  and  she  died.' 

1  Lane's  Arabian  Nights,  iii.  t,i6  sq.  Cashmeer  storyof  "  The  Ogress  Queen  " 

2  G.  Spitta-Bey,  Contes  arabes  (J.  H.  Knowles,  Folk-tales  of  Kashmir, 
modenies  (Leyden  and  Paris,  1883),  p.  42  sqq.)  zxiA  the  Bengalee  story  of 
No.  2,  p.  12  sqq.  The  story  in  its  "The  Boy  whom  Seven  Mothers 
main    outlines    is    identical    with    the  Suckled "  (Lai  Behari  Day,  Folk-tales 


THE  EXTERNAL  SOUL  IN 


In  a  Kabyl  story  an  ogre  declares  that  his  fate  is 
far  away  in  an  ^g'g,  which  is  in  a  pigeon,  which  is  in  a 
camel,  which  is  in  the  sea.  The  hero  procures  the  ^^^ 
and  crushes  it  between  his  hands,  and  the  ogre  dies.^ 
In  a  Magyar  folk-tale,  an  old  witch  detains  a  young 
prince  called  Ambrose  in  the  bowels  of  the  earth.  At 
last  she  confided  to  him  that  she  kept  a  wild  boar  in  a 
silken  meadow,  and  if  it  were  killed,  they  would  find  a 
hare  inside,  and  inside  the  hare  a  pigeon,  and  inside 
the  pigeon  a  small  box,  and  inside  the  box  one  black 
and  one  shining  beetle  :  the  shining  beetle  held  her 
life,  and  the  black  one  held  her  power  ;  if  these  two 
beetles  died,  then  her  life  would  come  to  an  end  also. 
When  the  old  hag  went  out,  Ambrose  killed  the  wild 
boar,  took  out  the  hare,  from  the  hare  he  took  the 
pigeon,  from  the  pigeon  the  box,  and  from  the  box  the 
two  beetles ;  he  killed  the  black  beetle,  but  kept  the 
shining  one  alive.  So  the  witch's  power  left  her 
immediately,  and  when  she  came  home,  she  had  to 
take  to  her  bed.  Having  learned  from  her  how  to 
escape  from  his  prison  to  the  upper  air,  Ambrose 
killed  the  shining  beetle,  and  the  old  hag's  spirit  left 
her  at  once.^     In  another  Hungarian  story  the  safety 

of  Bengal,  p.    117  sqq.;  Indian  Anti-  dans   la   Hatite   Ethiopia,    p.    272    sq.; 

quary,  \.  ijo  sqq.)     In  another  Arabian  Tausch,    "  Notices  of  the  Circassians," 

story  the  life   of  a  witch  is  bound  up  Journ.  Royal  Asiatic  Soc.  i.    (1834)  p. 

with  a  phial;   when   it  is  broken,   she  104;   Biddulph,    Tribes  of  the  Hindoo 

dies.     W.    A.    Clouston,    A    Group  of  Koosh,   pp.  77,   83  (cp.  Leitner,  Lan- 

Eastern  Romances  and  Stories,  p.   30.  gi<ages  and  Races  of  Dardistan,  p.  34)  ; 

A  similar  incident  occurs  in  a  Cashmeer  Denzil   Ibbetson,  Settlement  Report  of 

story.      Knowles,   op.    cit.    p.    73.      In  the  Panipat,  Tahsil,  aiid  Karnal  Par- 

the   Arabian    story    mentioned    in    the  gattah  of  the  Karnal  District,  p.   10 1  ; 

text,  the  hero,  by  a  genuine  touch  of  Moura,  Royaitine  du  Cambodge,  i.  427  ; 

local  colour,  is  made  to  drink  the  milk  F.    S.    Krauss,    Sitte   tifid ,  Bratich   der 

of    an    ogress's    breasts   and    hence    is  Siidslaven,  p.   14. 

regarded   by  her  as  her  son.      Cp.  W.  '    Riviere,     Contes   populaires   de    la 

\<.o\i^xi^ox\'im\\.\\,Kinsliipa>id Marriage  Kabylie  du  Djurdjiira,  p.   191. 
in  Early  Arabia,  p.   149  ;  and  for  the  ^  w     jj.    Jones  and   L.    L.    Kropf, 

same  mode  of  creating  kinship  among  The  Folk-tales  of  the  Magyar  (London, 

otlier  races,  see  D'Abbadie,  Douze  ans  1889),  p.  205  sq. 


IV  A  S AMOVED  STORY  321 

of  the  Dwarf- king  resides  in  a  golden  cockchafer, 
inside  a  golden  cock,  inside  a  golden  sheep,  inside  a 
golden  stag,  in  the  ninety- ninth  island.  The  hero 
overcomes  all  these  golden  animals  and  so  recovers 
his  bride,  whom  the  Dwarf-king  had  carried  off.^  A 
Samoyed  story  tells  how  seven  warlocks  killed  a  certain 
man's  mother  and  carried  off  his  sister,  whom  they 
kept  to  serve  them.  Every  night  when  they  came 
home  the  seven  warlocks  used  to  take  out  their  hearts 
and  place  them  in  a  dish,  which  the  woman  hung  on 
the  tent-poles.  But  the  wife  of  the  man  whom  they 
had  wronged  stole  the  hearts  of  the  warlocks  while 
they  slept,  and  took  them  to  her  husband.  By  break 
of  day  he  went  with  the  hearts  to  the  warlocks,  and 
found  them  at  the  point  of  death.  They  all  begged 
for  their  hearts  ;  but  he  threw  six  of  their  hearts  to 
the  ground,  and  six  of  the  warlocks  died.  The  seventh 
and  eldest  warlock  begged  hard  for  his  heart,  and  the 
man  said,  "  You  killed  my  mother.  Make  her  alive 
again,  and  I  will  give  you  back  your  heart."  The 
warlock  said  to  his  wife,  "Go  to  the  place  where  the 
dead  woman  lies.  You  will  find  a  bag  there.  Bring 
it  to  me.  The  woman's  spirit  is  in  the  bag."  So  his 
wife  brought  the  bag  ;  and  the  warlock  said  to  the  man, 
"  Go  to  your  dead  mother,  shake  the  bag  and  let  the 
spirit  breathe  over  her  bones  ;  so  she  will  come  to  life 
again."  The  man  did  as  he  was  bid,  and  his  mother 
was  restored  to  life.  Then  he  hurled  the  seventh 
heart  to  the  ground,  and  the  seventh  warlock  died." 

In  a  Tartar  poem  two  heroes  named  Ak  Molot 
and  Bulat  engage  in  mortal  combat.  Ak  Molot  pierces 
his  foe  through  and  through  with  an  arrow,   grapples 

1  R.  H.  Busk,  The  Folk-lore  of  Rome,  ^  QzsXx&xi,  Ethnologische  Vorlesimgen 

p.  168.  iiber  die  Altaischen  Volker,  p.   173  sqq. 

VOL.   II  Y 


THE  EXTERNAL  SOUL 


with  him,  and  dashes  him  to  the  ground,  but  all  in 
vain,  Bulat  could  not  die.  At  last  when  the  combat 
has  lasted  three  years,  a  friend  of  Ak  Molot  sees  a 
golden  casket  hanging  by  a  white  thread  from  the  sky, 
and  bethinks  him  that  perhaps  this  casket  contains 
Bulat's  soul.  So  he  shot  through  the  white  thread 
with  an  arrow,  and  down  fell  the  casket.  He  opened 
it,  and  in  the  casket  sat  ten  white  birds,  and  one  of  the 
birds  was  Bulat's  soul.  Bulat  wept  when  he  saw  that 
his  soul  was  found  in  the  casket.  But  one  after  the  other 
the  birds  were  killed,  and  then  Ak  Molot  easily  slew  his 
foe.^  In  another  Tartar  poem,  two  brothers  going  to 
fight  two  other  brothers  take  out  their  souls  and  hide 
them  in  the  form  of  a  white  herb  with  six  stalks  in  a 
deep  pit.  But  one  of  their  foes  sees  them  doing  so  and 
digs  up  their  souls,  which  he  puts  into  a  golden  ram's 
horn,  and  then  puts  the  ram's  horn  in  his  quiver.  The 
two  warriors  whose  souls  have  thus  been  stolen  know 
that  they  have  no  chance  of  victory,  and  accordingly 
make  peace  with  their  enemies.^  In  another  Tartar 
poem  a  terrible  demon  sets  all  the  gods  and  heroes  at 
defiance.  At  last  a  valiant  youth  fights  the  demon, 
binds  him  hand  and  foot,  and  slices  him  with  his  sword. 
But  still  the  demon  is  not  slain.  So  the  youth  asked 
him,  "  Tell  me,  where  is  your  soul  hidden  ?  For  if  your 
soul  had  been  hidden  in  your  body,  you  must  have 
been  dead  long  ago."  The  demon  replied,  "  On  the 
saddle  of  my  horse  is  a  bag.  In  the  bag  is  a  serpent 
with  twelve  heads.  In  the  serpent  is  my  soul.  When 
you  have  killed  the  serpent,  you  have  killed  me  also." 
So  the  youth  took  the  saddle-bag  from  the  horse  and 
killed  the  twelve-headed  serpent,  whereupon  the  demon 

1  Schiefner,  Heldeusagen  der  Minussinscheti  Tatarcu,  pp.  172-176. 
^  Schiefner,  op.  cit.  pp.  108- 11 2. 


IN  TARTAR  POEMS  323 


expired.^  In  another  Tartar  poem  a  hero  called  Kok 
Chan  deposits  with  a  maiden  a  golden  ring,  in  which  is 
half  his  strenofth.  Afterwards  when  Kok  Chan  is 
wrestling  long  with  a  hero  and  cannot  kill  him,  a 
woman  drops  into  his  mouth  the  ring  which  contains 
half  his  strength.  Thus  inspired  with  fresh  force  he 
slays  his  enemy. ^' 

In  a  Mongolian  story  the  hero  Joro  gets  the 
better  of  his  enemy  the  lama  Tschoridong  in  the 
following  way.  The  lama,  who  is  an  enchanter,  sends 
out  his  soul  in  the  form  of  a  wasp  to  sting  Joro's 
eyes.  But  Joro  catches  the  wasp  in  his  hand,  and  by 
alternately  shutting  and  opening  his  hand  he  causes 
the  lama  alternately  to  lose  and  recover  consciousness.^ 
In  a  Tartar  poem  two  youths  cut  open  the  body  of  an 
old  witch  and  tear  out  her  bowels,  but  all  to  no  pur- 
pose, she  still  lives.  On  being  asked  where  her  soul 
is,  she  answers  that  it  is  in  the  middle  of  her  shoe-sole 
in  the  form  of  a  seven -headed  speckled  snake.  So 
one  of  the  youths  slices  her  shoe-sole  with  his  sword, 
takes  out  the  speckled  snake,  and  cuts  off  its  seven 
heads.  Then  the  witch  dies.*  Another  Tartar  poem 
describes  how  the  hero  Kartaga  grappled  with  the 
Swan-woman.  Long  they  wrestled.  Moons  waxed 
and  waned  and  still  they  wrestled  ;  years  came  and 
went,  and  still  the  struggle  went  on.  But  the  piebald 
horse  and  the  black  horse  knew  that  the  Swan-woman's 


1  Schiefner,  op.  cit.  pp.  360-364  ;  because  it  is  feared  the  owner  of  the 
Castren,  Vorlesiingen  iiber  die  finnische  horse  will  become  the  greatest  hero  on 
Mythologie,  p.  186  sq.  earth.      But  these  cases  are,    to  some 

2  Schiefner,  op.  cit.  pp.  189-193.  extent,  the  converse  of  those  in  the  text. 
In  another  Tartar  poem '(Schiefner,  c/.  3  gchott,  "  Ueber  die  Sage^  von 
cit.  p.  390  sq.)  a  boy's  soul  is  shut  up  Geser  Chan,"  Abhandlungen  d.  Konigl. 
by  his  enemies  in  a  box.  While  the  Akad.d.  IVissensch.  zu  Berlin,  lS$l,^. 
soul  is  in   the  box,   the  boy  is  dead  ;  269. 

when  it  is  taken  out,  he  is  restored  to  *  W.     Radloff,    Proben    der    Volks- 

life.      In  the  same  poem  (p.  384)  the  littei-atitr  der  tiirkischen  Stdmme  Sild- 

soul  of  a  horse  is  kept  shut  up  in  a  box,  Sibiriens,  ii.  237  sq. 


324  THE  EXTERNAL  SOUL  chap. 

soul  was  not  in  her.  Under  the  black  earth  flow 
nine  seas  ;  where  the  seas  meet  and  form  one,  the  sea 
comes  to  the  surface  of  the  earth.  At  the  mouth  of 
the  nine  seas  rises  a  rock  of  copper  ;  it  rises  to  the 
surface  of  the  ground,  it  rises  up  between  heaven  and 
earth,  this  rock  of  copper.  At  the  foot  of  the  copper 
rock  is  a  black  chest,  in  the  black  chest  is  a  golden 
casket,  and  in  the  golden  casket  is  the  soul  of  the 
Swan-woman.  Seven  little  birds  are  the  soul  of  the 
Swan-woman  ;  if  the  birds  are  killed  the  Swan-woman 
will  die  straightway.  So  the  horses  ran  to  the  foot  of 
the  copper  rock,  opened  the  black  chest,  and  brought 
back  the  golden  casket.  Then  the  piebald  horse 
turned  himself  into  a  bald-headed  man,  opened  the 
golden  casket,  and  cut  off  the  heads  of  the  seven  birds. 
So  the  Swan-woman  died.^  In  a  Tartar  story  a  chief 
called  Tash  Kan  is  asked  where  his  soul  is.  He 
answers  that  there  are  seven  great  poplars,  and  under 
the  poplars  a  golden  well  ;  seven  Maralen  ij)  come  to 
drink  the  water  of  the  well,  and  the  belly  of  one  of 
them  trails  on  the  ground  ;  in  this  Maral  is  a  golden 
box,  in  the  golden  box  Is  a  silver  box,  in  the  silver 
box  are  seven  quails,  the  head  of  one  of  the  quails 
is  golden  and  its  tail  silver  ;  that  quail  is  Tash 
Kan's  soul.  The  hero  of  the  story  gets  possession 
of  the  seven  quails  and  wrings  the  necks  of  six  of 
them.  Then  Tash  Kan  comes  running  and  begs  the 
hero  to  let  his  soul  ^o  free.  But  the  hero  wrings  the 
quail's  neck,  and  Tash  Kan  drops  dead.^  In  another 
Tartar  poem  the  hero,  pursuing  his  sister  who  has 
driven  away  his  cattle,  is  warned  to  desist  from  the 
pursuit  because  his  sister  has  carried  away  his  soul  in 
a  golden  sword  and  a  golden  arrow,  and  if  he  pursues 

1  W.  Radloff,  op.  cit.  ii.  531  sqq.  ^  Id.,  iv.  88  sq. 


IV  IN  A  MALA  V  POEM  325 

her  she  will  kill  him  by  throwing  the  golden  sword  or 
shooting  the  golden  arrow  at  him/ 

A  Malay  poem  relates  how  once  upon  a  time  in 
the  city  of  Indrapoera  there  was  a  certain  merchant 
who  was  rich  and  prosperous,  but  he  had  no  children. 
One  day  as  he  walked  with  his  wife  by  the  river  they 
found  a  baby  girl,  fair  as  an  angel.  So  they  adopted 
the  child  and  called  her  Bidasari.  The  merchant 
caused  a  golden  fish  to  be  made,  and  into  this  fish  he 
transferred  the  soul  of  his  adopted  daughter.  Then 
he  put  the  golden  fish  in  a  golden  box  full  of  water,  and 
hid  it  in  a  pond  in  the  midst  of  his  garden.  In  time 
the  girl  grew  to  be  a  lovely  woman.  Now  the  King 
of  Indrapoera  had  a  fair  young  queen,  who  lived  in 
fear  that  the  king  might  take  to  himself  a  second  wife. 
So,  hearing  of  the  charms  of  Bidasari,  the  queen 
resolved  to  put  her  out  of  the  way.  So  she  lured  the 
girl  to  the  palace  and  tortured  her  cruelly ;  but 
Bidasari  could  not  die,  because  her  soul  was  not  in  her. 
At  last  she  could  stand  the  torture  no  longer  and  said 
to  the  queen,  "If  you  wish  me  to  die,  you  must  bring 
the  box  which  is  in  the  pond  in  my  father's  garden." 
So  the  box  was  brought  and  opened,  and  there  was 
the  golden  fish  in  the  water.  The  girl  said,  "  My  soul 
is  in  that  fish.  In  the  morning  you  must  take  the  fish 
out  of  the  water,  and  in  the  evening  you  must  put  it 
back  into  the  water.  Do  not  let  the  fish  lie  about,  but 
bind  it  round  your  neck.  If  you  do  this,  I  shall  soon 
die."  So  the  queen  took  the  fish  out  of  the  box  and 
fastened  it  round  her  neck  ;  and  no  sooner  had  she 
done  so,  than  Bidasari  fell  into  a  swoon.  But  in  the 
evening,  when  the  fish  was  put  back  into  the  water, 
Bidasari  came  to  herself  again.     Seeing  that  she  thus 

1  W.  Radloff,  oJ>.  cit.  i.  345  sq. 


326  THE  EXTERNAL  SOUL  chap. 

had  the  girl  in  her  power,  the  queen  sent  her  home  to 
her  adopted  parents.  To  save  her  from  further  persecu- 
tion her  parents  resolved  to  remove  their  daughter  from 
the  city.  So  in  a  lonely  and  desolate  spot  they  built  a 
house  and  brought  Bidasari  thither.  Here  she  dwelt 
alone,  undergoing  vicissitudes  that  corresponded  with 
the  vicissitudes  of  the  golden  fish  in  which  was  her 
soul.  All  day  long,  while  the  fish  was  out  of  the 
water,  she  remained  unconscious ;  but  in  the  evening, 
when  the  fish  was  put  into  the  water,  she  revived. 
One  day  the  king  was  out  hunting,  and  coming  to 
the  house  where  Bidasari  lay  unconscious,  was  smitten 
with  her  beauty.  He  tried  to  waken  her,  but  in  vain. 
Next  day,  towards  evening,  he  repeated  his  visit,  but 
still  found  her  unconscious.  However,  when  darkness 
fell,  she  came  to  herself  and  told  the  king  the  secret  of 
her  life.  So  the  king  returned  to  the  palace,  took  the 
fish  from  the  queen,  and  put  it  in  water.  Immediately 
Bidasari  revived,  and  the  king  took  her  to  wife.^ 

The  last  story  of  an  external  soul  which  I  shall  notice 
comes  from  Nias,  an  island  to  the  west  of  Sumatra, 
which  we  have  visited  more  than  once  in  the  course  of 
this  book.  Once  on  a  time  a  chief  was  captured  by 
his  enemies,  who  tried  to  put  him  to  death  but  failed. 
Water  would  not  drown  him  nor  fire  burn  him  nor 
steel  pierce  him.  At  last  his  wife  revealed  the  secret. 
On  his  head  he  had  a  hair  as  hard  as  a  copper  wire  ; 
and  with  this  wire  his  life  was  bound  up.  So  the  hair 
was  plucked  out,  and  with  it  his  spirit  fled.^ 


1  G.A.  Wilken,  "De  Simsonsage,"  Verhandel.vanhet  Baiav.  Genootsch.v. 
De  Gids,  1888,  No.  5,  p.  6  sqq.  (of  Ktmslen  en  Wetenschappen,  xxx.  p. 
the  separate  reprint).  Cp.  Backer,  iii;  Sundermann,  "Die  Insel  Nias," 
L'Arckipel  Indien,  -p"^.  144-149.  AUgemeine     JMissions  -  Zeitsch-ift,     xi. 

2  Nieuwenhuisen      en      Rosenberg,  (1884)  p.  453. 
"  Verslag   omtrent  het    eiland   Nias," 


IN  FOLK-CUSTOM  327 


§  4. —  The  external  soul  in  folk-nistom 

Thus  the  idea  that  the  soul  may  be  deposited  for 
a  longer  or  shorter  time  in  some  place  of  security 
outside  the  body,  or  at  all  events  in  the  hair,  is  found 
in  the  popular  tales  of  many  races.  It  remains  to  show- 
that  the  idea  is  not  a  mere  figment  devised  to  adorn  a 
tale,  but  is  a  real  article  of  primitive  faith,  which  has 
given  rise  to  a  corresponding  set  of  customs. 

We  have  seen  that  in  the  tales  the  hero,  as  a 
preparation  for  battle,  sometimes  removes  his  soul 
from  his  body,  in  order  that  his  body  may  be  in- 
vulnerable and  immortal  in  the  combat.  With  a  like 
intention  the  savage  removes  his  soul  from  his  body 
on  various  occasions  of  real  or  imaginary  danger. 
Thus  we  have  seen  that  among  the  Minahassa  of 
Celebes,  when  a  family  moves  into  a  new  house,  a 
priest  collects  the  souls  of  the  whole  family  in  a  bag, 
and  afterwards  restores  them  to  their  owners,  because 
the  moment  of  entering  a  new  house  is  supposed  to 
be  fraught  with  supernatural  danger.^  In  Southern 
Celebes  when  a  woman  is  brought  to  bed  the  mes- 
senger who  fetches  the  doctor  or  the  midwife  always 
carries  with  him  a  piece  of  iron,  which  he  delivers  to 
the  doctor.  The  doctor  must  keep  it  in  his  house  till 
the  confinement  is  over,  when  he  gives  it  back, 
receiving  a  fixed  sum  of  money  for  doing  so.  The 
piece  of  iron  represents  the  woman's  soul,  which  at 
this  critical  time  is  believed  to  be  safer  out  of  her  body 
than  in  it.      Hence  the  doctor  must  take  great  care  of 

1  Above,  vol.  i.  p.  134. 


STRENGTH  IN  HAIR 


the  piece  of  iron  ;  for  if  it  were  lost,  the  woman's  soul 
would  assuredly,  it  is  supposed,  be  lost  with  it.^ 

Again,  we  have  seen  that  in  folk-tales  a  man's  soul 
or  strength  is  sometimes  represented  as  bound  up  with 
his  hair,  and  that  when  his  hair  is  cut  off  he  dies  or 
grows  weak.  So  the  natives  of  Amboina  used  to 
think  that  their  strength  was  in  their  hair  and  would 
desert  them  if  it  were  shorn.  A  criminal  under  tor- 
ture in  a  Dutch  Court  of  that  island  persisted  in 
denying  his  guilt  till  his  hair  was  cut  off,  when  he 
immediately  confessed.  One  man  who  was  tried  for 
murder  endured  without  flinching  the  utmost  ingenuity 
of  his  torturers  till  he  saw  the  surgeon  standing  with  a 
pair  of  shears.  On  asking  what  this  was  for,  and  being 
told  that  it  was  to  cut  his  hair,  he  begged  they  would 
not  do  it,  and  made  a  clean  breast.  In  subsequent 
cases,  when  torture  failed  to  wring  a  confession  from  a 
prisoner,  the  Dutch  authorities  made  a  practice  of 
cutting  off  his  hair.-  In  Ceram  it  is  still  believed  that 
if  young  people  have  their  hair  cut  they  will  be 
weakened  and  enervated  thereby.^  In  Zacynthus 
people  think  that  the  whole  strength  of  the  ancient 
Greeks  resided  in  three  hairs  on  their  breasts,  and 
vanished  whenever  these  hairs  were  cut ;  but  if  the  hairs 
were  allowed  to  grow  again,  their  strength  returned.* 

Again,  we  have  seen  that  in  folk -tales  the  life  of  a 
person  is  sometimes  so  bound  up  with  the  life  of  a  plant 
that  the  withering  of  the  plant  will  immediately  follow 
or  be  followed  by  the  death  of  the  person.^  Similarly 
among  the   M'Bengas  in   Western    Africa,  about   the 

1  B.    F.    Matthes,   Bijdragen  tot  de  3  Rjedel,     De    sluik-en    kroesharige 
EtJmologie  van  Ziiid- Celebes,  p.  54.  rassen  tusschen  Selebes  en  Papita,  p.  137. 

2  F.  Valentyn,  Oiid  en  Niemo  Oost-  «  -^     Schmidt,    Das    Volksleben    der 
Indien,  ii.  143  sq.;  G.  A.  Wilken,  De  Neiigriecken,  p.  206. 

Szmsonsage,  p.   15  si/.  5  Above,  pp.  305,  307,  309,  311. 


IV  LIFE-PLANTS  329 

Gaboon,  when  two  children  are  born  on  the  same  day, 
the  people  plant  two  trees  of  the  same  kind  and  dance 
round  them.  The  life  of  each  of  the  children  is  be- 
lieved to  be  bound  up  with  the  life  of  one  of  the  trees  ; 
and  if  the  tree  dies  or  is  thrown  down,  they  are  sure 
that  the  child  will  soon  die.^  In  the  Cameroons,  also, 
the  life  of  a  person  is  believed  to  be  sympathetically 
bound  up  with  that  of  a  tree.^  Some  of  the  Papuans 
unite  the  life  of  a  new-born  child  sympathetically  with 
that  of  a  tree  by  driving  a  pebble  into  the  bark  of  the 
tree.  This  is  supposed  to  give  them  complete  mastery 
over  the  child's  life  ;  if  the  tree  is  cut  down,  the  child 
will  die.^  After  a  birth  the  Maoris  used  to  bury  the 
navel-string  in  a  sacred  place  and  plant  a  young  sapling 
over  it.  As  the  tree  grew,  it  was  a  tolm  oranga  or  sign 
of  life  for  the  child;  if  it  flourished,  the  child  would 
prosper ;  if  it  withered  and  died,  the  parents  augured 
the  worst  for  their  child.*  In  Southern  Celebes,  when 
a  child  is  born,  a  cocoa-nut  is  planted,  and  is  watered 
with  the  water  in  which  the  after-birth  and  navel-string 
have  been  washed.  As  it  grows  up,  the  tree  is  called 
the  "  contemporary  "  of  the  child. ^  So  in  Bali  a  cocoa- 
palm  is  planted  at  the  birth  of  a  child.  It  is  believed 
to  grow  up  equally  with  the  child,  and  is  called 
its  "life-plant."'^  On  certain  occasions  the  Dyaks  of 
Borneo  plant  a  palm-tree,  which  is  believed  to  be  a 
complete  index  of  their  fate.  If  it  flourishes,  they 
reckon  on  good  fortune  ;  but  if  it  withers  or  dies,  they 


1  Revue  d Ethnographie,  ii.  223.  184;  Dumont  D'Urville,  Voyage  autoiir 

2  Bastian,    Die  detitsche   Expedition  du  inonde  et  a  la  recherche  de  La  Perouse 
an  der  Loango-Kiiste,  i.   165.  sur  la  corvette  Astrolabe,  ii.  444. 

3  Bastian,  Ein  Besuch  in  San  Salva-  ^  Matthes,  Bijdragen  tot  de  Ethno- 
dor,    p.    103   sq.;   id.,   Der  Mensch  in  logie  van  Zuid- Celebes,  p.  59- 

der  Geschichte,  iii.  193.  ^  Van  Eck,  "  Schetsen  van  het  eiland 

*  R.    Taylor,    Te  Ika  a  Maui ;   or,  Bali,"    Tijdschrift    voor    Nederlandsch 

Nezu  Zealand  and  its  Inhabitants,^  p.  Indie,  N.  S.  ix.  (1880)  p.  417  ^1- 


330  LIFE-PLANTS 


expect  misfortune.^  It  is  said  that  there  are  still 
families  in  Russia,  Germany,  England,  France,  and 
Italy  who  are  accustomed  to  plant  a  tree  at  the  birth 
of  a  child.  The  tree,  it  is  hoped,  will  grow  with  the 
child,  and  it  is  tended  with  special  care."  The  custom 
is  still  pretty  general  in  the  canton  of  Aargau  in 
Switzerland;  an  apple-tree  is  planted  for  a  boy  and 
a  pear-tree  for  a  girl,  and  the  people  think  that  the 
child  will  flourish  or  dwindle  with  the  tree.^  In 
Mecklenburg  the  after-birth  is  thrown  out  at  the  foot 
of  a  young  tree,  and  the  child  is  then  believed  to  grow 
with  the  tree.^  In  England  persons  are  sometimes 
passed  through  a  cleft  tree  as  a  cure  for  rupture,  and 
thenceforward  a  sympathetic  connection  is  believed  to 
exist  between  them  and  the  tree.  "  Thomas  Chilling- 
worth,  son  of  the  owner  of  an  adjoining  farm,  now 
about  thirty- four  years  of  age,  was,  when  an  infant 
of  a  year  old,  passed  through  a  similar  tree,  now 
perfectly  sound,  which  he  preserves  with  so  much  care 
that  he  will  not  suffer  a  single  branch  to  be  touched, 
for  it  is  believed  that  the  life  of  the  patient  depends  on 
the  life  of  the  tree ;  and  the  moment  that  it  is  cut 
down,  be  the  patient  ever  so  distant,  the  rupture 
returns,  and  a  mortification  ensues."^  When  Lord 
Byron  first  visited  his  ancestral  estate  of  Newstead 
"  he  planted,  it  seems,  a  young  oak  in  some  part  of 
the  grounds,  and  had  an  idea  that  as  it  fiourished 
so  should  hey^ 

But  in   practice,   as  in  folk -tales,  it  is  not  merely 

^  G.  A.  Wilken,  De  Sit?isonsage,  p.  Gebrduche  aus  Mecklenburg,  ii.  43,  No. 

26.  63. 

2  Gubernatis,  Alythohgie  des  Plantes,  ^  Gentleman'' s     Magazine,     October 
i.  xxviii.  sq.  1804,     p.     909,     quoted     by     Brand, 

3  W.  Mannhardt,  B.  K.  p.  50 ;  Ploss,  Fopn/ar  Antiquities,  iii.    289  ;  W.   G. 
Das  Kind,"^  i.  79.  Black,  Folk-medicine,  pp.  31  sq.,  67. 

*  K.   Bartsch,  Sagen,  Miirchen  nnd  ^  ^ioox&^s  Life  of  Lord  By  }-on,\.  loi. 


THE  TAMANIU  33i 


with  trees  and  plants  that  the  life  of  an  individual  is 
occasionally  believed  to  be  united  by  a  bond  of  physical 
sympathy.  The  same  bond,  it  is  supposed,  may 
exist  between  a  man  and  an  animal  or  a  thing, 
so  that  the  death  or  destruction  of  the  animal  or 
thing  is  immediately  followed  by  the  death  of  the 
man.  The  Emperor  Romanus  Lecapenus  was  once 
informed  by  an  astronomer  that  the  life  of  Simeon 
prince  of  Bulgaria  was  bound  up  with  a  certain  column 
in  Constantinople,  so  that  if  the  capital  of  the  column 
were  removed  Simeon  would  immediately  die.  The 
Emperor  took  the  hint  and  removed  the  capital,  and  at 
the  same  hour,  as  the  emperor  learned  by  inquiry, 
Simeon  died  of  heart  disease  in  Bulgaria.^  Amongst 
the  Karens  of  Burma  "  the  knife  with  which  the  navel- 
string  is  cut  is  carefully  preserved  for  the  child.  The 
life  of  the  child  is  supposed  to  be  in  some  way  con- 
nected with  it,  for  if  lost  or  destroyed  it  is  said  the  child 
will  not  be  long-lived."-  The  Malays  believe  that 
"the  soul  of  a  person  may  pass  into  another  person 
or  into  an  animal,  or  rather  that  such  a  mysterious 
relation  can  arise  between  the  two  that  the  fate  of  the 
one  is  wholly  dependent  on  that  of  the  other."  ^  In 
the  Banks  Islands  "some  people  connect  themselves 
with  an  object,  generally  an  animal,  as  a  lizard  or  a 
snake,  or  with  a  stone,  which  they  imagine  to  have  a 
certain  very  close  natural  relation  to  themselves.  This, 
at  Mota,  is  called  tamaniu — likeness.  This  word  at 
Aurora  is  used  for  the  '  atai '  \i.e.  soul]  of  Mota.  Some 
fancy  dictates  the  choice  of  a  tamaniu  ;  or  it  may  be 

1  Cedrenus,  Compend.  Histoi:  p.  ^  Matthes,  Makassarsch  -  Hollandsch 
625  B,  vol.  ii.  p.  308,  ed.  Bekker.  IVoordenboek,   s.v.    soeinaiigd,   p.    569  ; 

2  F.  Mason,  "  Physical  Character  of  G.  A.  Wilken,  *'  Het  animisme  bij  de 
the  Karens,"  Journal  of  the  Asiatic  volken  van  den  Indischen  Archipel," 
Society  of  Bengal,  1866,  pt.  ii.  p.  9.  De  Indische  Gids,  June  18S4,  p.  933. 


332  THE  IHLOZI  chap. 

found  by  drinking  the  infusion  of  certain  herbs  and 
heaping  together  the  dregs.  Whatever  Hving  thing  is 
first  seen  in  or  upon  the  heap  is  the  tamaniu.  It  is 
watched,  but  not  fed  or  worshipped.  The  natives 
beHeve  that  it  comes  at  call.  The  life  of  the  man  is 
bound  up  with  the  life  of  his  tamaniu.  If  it  dies,  gets 
broken  or  lost,  the  man  will  die.  In  sickness  they 
send  to  see  how  the  tamaniu  is,  and  judge  the  issue 
accordingly.      This  is  only  the  fancy  of  some."  ^ 

But  what  among  the  Banks  Islanders  and  the 
Malays  is  irregular  and  occasional,  among  other 
peoples  is  systematic  and  universal.  The  Zulus 
believe  that  every  man  has  his  ihlozi,  a  kind  of 
mysterious  serpent,  "  which  specially  guards  and  helps 
him,  lives  with  him,  wakes  with  him,  sleeps  and  travels 
with  him,  but  always  under  ground.  If  it  ever  makes 
its  appearance,  great  is  the  joy,  and  the  man  must  seek 
to  discover  the  meaning  of  its  appearance.  .He  who  has 
no  ihlozi  must  die.  Therefore  if  any  one  unintention- 
ally kills  an  ihlozi  serpent,  the  man  whose  ihlozi  it  was 
dies,  but  the  serpent  comes  to  life  again."  "^  Amongst 
the  Zapotecs  of  Central  America,  when  a  woman  was 
about  to  be  confined,  her  relations  assembled  in  the 
hut,  and  began  to  draw  on  the  floor  figures  of  different 
animals,  rubbing  each  one  out  as  soon  as  it  was  com- 
pleted. This  went  on  till  the  moment  of  birth,  and 
the  figure  that  then  remained  sketched  upon  the 
ground  was  called  the  child's  tana  or  second  self. 
"When  the  child  grew  old  enough  he  procured  the 
animal  that  represented  him  and  took  care  of  it,  as  it 

1  R.  H.  Codrington,  "  Notes  on  the  ^  y.    Speckmann,    Die    Hermanns- 

Customs    of    Mota,     Banks    Islands"      burger  Mission  in  Afrika  (Heimanns- 
(communicated    by   the    Rev.    Lorimer      burg,  1S76),  p.  167. 
Fison),  TransactioJis  of  the  Royal  Society 
of  Victoria,  xvi.  136. 


THE  NAGUAL  333 


was  believed  that  health  and  existence  were  bound  up 
with  that  of  the  animal's,  in  fact  that  the  death  of  both 
would  occur  simultaneously,"  or  rather  that  when  the 
animal  died  the  man  would  die.^  Among  the  Indians 
of  Guatemala  the  nagual  or  naital  is  an  "  animate  or 
inanimate  object,  generally  an  animal,  which  stands  in 
a  parallel  relation  to  a  particular  man,  so  that  the  weal 
and  woe  of  the  man  depend  on  the  fate  of  the  animal." 
Among  the  Chontal  Indians  who  inhabit  the  part  of 
Honduras  bordering  on  Guatemala  and  in  point  of 
social  culture  stand  very  close  to  the  Pipil  Indians  of 
Guatemala,  the  nagtial  used  to  be  obtained  as  follows. 
The  young  Indian  went  into  the  forest  to  a  lonely 
place  by  a  river  or  to  the  top  of  a  mountain,  and 
prayed  with  tears  to  the  gods  that  they  would  vouch- 
safe to  him  what  his  forefathers  had  possessed  before 
him.  After  sacrificing  a  dog  or  a  bird  he  laid  himself 
down  to  sleep.  Then  in  a  dream  or  after  awakening 
from  sleep  there  appeared  to  him  a  jaguar,  puma,  coyote 
(prairie-wolf),  crocodile,  serpent,  or  bird.  To  this 
visionary  animal  the  Indian  offered  blood  drawn  from 
his  tongue,  his  ears,  and  other  parts  of  his  body,  and 
prayed  for  an  abundant  yield  of  salt  and  cacao.  Then 
the  animal  said  to  him,  "  On  such  and  such  a  day  you 
shall  sfo  out  huntincr,  and  the  first  animal  that  meets 
you  will  be  myself,  who  will  always  be  your  companion 
and  nagiiaiy  A  man  who  had  no  nagual  zoxAA  never 
grow  rich.  The  Indians  were  persuaded  that  the  death 
of  their  nagual  would  entail  their  own.  Legend 
affirms  that  in  the  first  battles  with  the  Spaniards  on 

1  'Ba.ncro^i,  Native  Races  of  the  Pacific  forzoso  que    miiei-an    ellos  cuaiido   este 

Coast,  i.  66 1.      The  words  quoted  by  tniiere,"  are  not  quite  accurately  repre- 

Bancroft    (p.    662,    note)    "  Conservase  sented   by    the    statement  of  Bancroft 

entre   ellos  la  creencia  de   que  su  vida  in  the  text. 
esta  unida  a  la  de  uii  animal,  y  que  es 


334  SEX-TOTEMS 


the  plateau  of  Ouetzaltenango  the  nagiials  of  the 
Indian  chiefs  fought  in  the  form  of  serpents.  The 
nagual  of  the  highest  chief  was  especially  conspicuous, 
because  it  had  the  form  of  a  great  bird,  resplendent  in 
green  plumage.  The  Spanish  general  Pedro  de 
Alvarado  killed  the  bird  with  his  lance,  and  at  the 
same  moment  the  Indian  chief  fell  dead  to  the  ground.^ 
In  many  of  the  Australian  tribes  each  sex  regards 
a  particular  species  of  animals  in  the  same  way  that  a 
Central  American  Indian  regards  his  nagual,  but  with 
this  difference,  that  whereas  the  Indian  apparently 
knows  the  individual  animal  with  which  his  life  is 
bound  up,  the  Australians  only  know  that  each  of  their 
lives  is  bound  up  with  some  one  animal  of  the  species, 
but  they  cannot  say  with  which.  The  result  naturally 
is  that  every  man  spares  and  protects  all  the  animals 
of  the  species  with  which  the  lives  of  the  men  are 
bound  up  ;  and  every  woman  spares  and  protects  all 
the  animals  of  the  species  with  which  the  lives  of  the 
women  are  bound  up  ;  because  no  one  knows  but  that 
the  death  of  any  animal  of  the  respective  species  might 
entail  his  or  her  own  ;  just  as  the  killing  of  the  green 
bird  was  immediately  followed  by  the  death  of  the 
Indian  chief,  and  the  killing  of  the  parrot  by  the  death 
of  Punchkin  in  the  fairy  tale.  Thus,  for  example,  the 
Wotjobaluk  tribe  of  South  Eastern  Australia  "  held 
that  'the  life  of  Ngununguniit  (the  Bat)  is  the  life  of  a 
man  and  the  life  of  Yartatgiirk  (the  Nightjar)  is  the 
life  of  a  woman,'  and  that  when  either  of  these  creatures 
is  killed  the  life  of  some  man  or  of  some  woman  is 
shortened.      In  such  a  case  every  man  or  every  woman 

1  Otto  StoU,  Die  Ethnologic  der  Races  of  the  Faciftc  States,  i.  740  sq.; 
Indianerstamme  von  Guatemala  (Ley-  Bastian,  Die  Ciilturliinder  des  alien 
den,  1889),  p.  57  sq.;  Bancroft,  Native      Amerika,  ii.  2S2. 


IN  AUSTRALIA  335 


in  the  camp  feared  that  he  or  she  might  be  the  victim, 
and  from  this  cause  great  fights  arose  in  this  tribe.  I 
learn  that  in  these  fights,  men  on  one  side  and  women 
on  the  other,  it  was  not  at  all  certain  which  would  be 
victorious,  for  at  times  the  women  grave  the  men  a 
severe  drubbing  with  their  yamsticks  while  often 
women  were  injured  or  killed  by  spears."^  The 
particular  species  of  animals  with  which  the  lives  of 
the  sexes  were  believed  to  be  respectively  bound  up 
varied  somewhat  from  tribe  to  tribe.  Thus  whereas 
among  the  Wotjobaluk  the  bat  was  the  animal  of  the 
men,  at  Gunbower  Creek  on  the  lower  Murray  the  bat 
seems  to  have  been  the  animal  of  the  women,  for  the 
natives  would  not  kill  it  for  the  reason  that  "  if  it  was 
killed,  one  of  their  lubras  [women]  would  be  sure  to 
die  in  consequence."^  But  the  belief  itself  and  the 
fights  to  which  it  gave  rise  are  known  to  have 
extended  over  a  large  part  of  South  Eastern  Australia, 
and  probably  they  extended  much  farther.^  The 
belief  is  a  very  serious  one,  and  so  consequently  are 
the  fights  which  spring  from  it.  Thus  where  the  bat  is 
the  men's  animal  they  "protect  it  against  injury,  even 
to  the  half-killing  of  their  wives  for  its  sake;"  and 
where  the  fern  owl  or  large  goatsucker  (a  night  bird)  is 
the  women's  animal,  "  it  is  jealously  protected  by  them. 
If  a  man  kills  one,  they  are  as  much  enraged  as  if  it 
was  one  of  their  children,  and  will  strike  him  with  their 
long  poles."  "^ 

The  jealous  protection  thus  afforded  by  Australian 
men  and  women  to  bats  and  owls  respectively  (for  bats 

1  A.   W.    Howitt,   "Further    Notes      Soc.    New  South    Wales,    1862-65,    p. 
on     the    AustraUan    Class    Systems,"      359  sq. 

Joiirn.  Anthrop.  Inst,  xviii.  58.  3  ^    ^    Howitt    l.c 

2  Gerard     Krefft,     "  Manners     and  '       '  '    '  ' 

Customs  of  the  Aborigines  of  the  Lower  *  Dawson,    Australian    Aborigines, 

Murray  and  Darhng,"  7;-rt;?5a(7'. /'/«7i5'5.       p.  52. 


536  SEX-TOTEMS 


and  owls  seem  to  be  the  creatures  usually  allotted  to 
men  and  women  respectively)  is  not  based  upon  purely 
selfish  considerations.  For  each  man  believes  that 
not  only  his  own  life,  but  the  lives  of  his  father,  brothers, 
sons,  etc.,  are  bound  up  with  the  lives  of  particular 
bats,  and  that  therefore  in  protecting  the  bat  species 
he  is  protecting  the  lives  of  all  his  male  relations  as 
well  as  his  own.  Similarly,  each  woman  believes  that 
the  lives  of  her  mother,  sisters,  daughters,  etc.,  equally 
with  her  own,  are  bound  up  with  the  lives  of  particular 
owls,  and  that  in  guarding  the  owl  species  she  is  guard- 
ing- the  lives  of  all  her  female  relations  in  addition  to 
her  own.  Now,  when  men's  lives  are  thus  supposed 
to  be  contained  in  certain  animals,  it  is  obvious  that 
the  animals  can  hardly  be  distinguished  from  the  men, 
or  the  men  from  the  animals.  If  my  brother  John's 
life  is  in  a  bat,  then,  on  the  one  hand,  the  bat  is  my 
brother  as  well  as  John  ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  John 
is  in  a  sense  a  bat,  since  his  life  is  in  a  bat.  Similarly, 
if  my  sister  Mary's  life  is  in  an  owl,  then  the  owl  is 
my  sister  and  Mary  is  an  owl.  This  is  a  natural 
enough  conclusion,  and  the  Australians  have  not  failed 
to  draw  it.  When  the  bat  is  the  man's  animal,  it  is 
called  his  brother ;  and  when  the  owl  is  the  woman's 
animal,  it  is  called  her  sister.  And  conversely  a  man 
addresses  a  woman  as  an  owl,  and  she  addresses  him 
as  a  bat.^  So  with  the  other  animals  allotted  to  the 
sexes  respectively  in  other  tribes.  For  example, 
among  the  Kurnai  all  Emu  Wrens  were  "brothers" 
of  the  men,  and  all  the  men  were  Emu  Wrens  ;  all 
Superb  Warblers  were  "  sisters  "  of  the  women,  and 
all  the  women  were  Superb  Warblers.^ 

1  Journ.    Aiithrop.    Inst.    xiv.    350,  ^  pison  and  Howitt,  Kamilaroi  and 

XV.  416,   xviii.    57   (the   "nightjar"  is      Kumai,^^.  1 94,  20 1  5^. ,  2 1 5  ; /<??«■«. 
apparently  an  owl).  Anthrop.  Inst.  xv.  416,  xviii.  56  sq. 


TOTEM  ISM  337 


But  when  a  savap-e  names  himself  after  an  animal, 
calls  it  his  brother,  and  refuses  to  kill  it,  the  animal  is 
said  to  be  his  totem.  Accordingly  the  bat  and  the  owl, 
the  Emu  Wren  and  the  Superb  Warbler,  may  properly 
be  described  as  totems  of  the  sexes.  But  the  assig- 
nation of  a  totem  to  a  sex  is  comparatively  rare,  and 
has  hitherto  been  discovered  nowhere  but  in  Australia. 
Far  more  commonly  the  totem  is  appropriated  not  to 
a  sex,  but  to  a  tribe  or  clan,  and  is  hereditary  either  in 
the  male  or  female  line.  The  relation  of  an  individual 
to  the  tribal  totem  does  not  differ  in  kind  from  his 
relation  to  the  sex  totem  ;  he  will  not  kill  it,  he  speaks 
of  it  as  his  brother,  and  he  calls  himself  by  its  name.^ 
Now  if  the  relations  are  similar,  the  explanation  which 
holds  good  of  the  one  ought  equally  to  hold  good  of 
the  other.  Therefore  the  reason  why  a  tribe  revere  a 
particular  species  of  animals  or  plants  (for  the  tribal 
totem  may  be  a  plant)  and  call  themselves  after  it,  must 
be  a  belief  that  the  life  of  each  individual  of  the  tribe  is 
bound  up  with  some  one  animal  or  plant  of  the  species, 
and  that  his  or  her  death  would  be  the  consequence 
of  killing  that  particular  animal,  or  destroying  that 
particular  plant.  This  explanation  of  totemism  squares 
very  well  with  Sir  George  Grey's  definition  of  a  totem 
or /Cv<5^;2^  in  Western  Australia.  He  says,  "  A  certain 
mysterious  connection  exists  between  a  family  and  its 
kobong,  so  that  a  member  of  the  family  will  never  kill 
an  animal  of  the  species  to  which  his  kobong  belongs, 
should  he  find  it  asleep  ;  indeed  he  always  kills  it 
reluctantly,  and  never  without  affording  it  a  chance  to 
escape.  This  arises  from  the  family  belief  that  some 
one  individual  of  the  species  is  their  nearest  friend,  to 

1  The   chief  facts  of  totemism  have      a  little  work,  Totemism  (Edinburgh,  A. 
been  collected  by  the  present  writer  in      and  C.  Black,  1887). 

VOL.   II  Z 


338  TOTEM  ISM 


kill  whom  would  be  a  great  crime,  and  to  be  carefully 
avoided.  Similarly,  a  native  who  has  a  vegetable  for 
his  kobo7ig  may  not  gather  it  under  certain  circum- 
stances, and  at  a  particular  period  of  the  year."^  Here 
it  will  be  observed  that  though  each  man  spares  all  the 
animals  or  plants  of  the  species,  they  are  not  all  equally 
precious  to  him  ;  far  from  it,  out  of  the  whole  species 
there  is  only  one  which  is  specially  dear  to  him  ;  but 
as  he  does  not  know  which  the  dear  one  is,  he  is 
obliged  to  spare  them  all  from  fear  of  injuring  the  one. 
Again,  this  explanation  of  the  tribal  totem  harmonises 
with  the  supposed  effect  of  killing  one  of  the  totem 
species.  "One  day  one  of  the  blacks  killed  a  crow. 
Three  or  four  days  afterwards  a  Boortwa  (crow)  \i.e.  a 
man  of  the  Crow  clan  or  tribe]  named  Larry  died.  He 
had  been  ailing  for  some  days,  but  the  killing  of  his 
wingong  [totem]  hastened  his  death. "^  Here  the  kill- 
ing of  the  crow  caused  the  death  of  a  man  of  the  Crow 
clan,  exactly  as,  in  the  case  of  the  sex  totems,  the  killing 
of  a  bat  causes  the  death  of  a  Bat  man,  or  the  killing 
of  an  owl  causes  the  death  of  an  Owl  woman.  Similarly, 
the  killing  of  his  nagiial  causes  the  death  of  a  Central 
American  Indian,  the  killing  of  his  ihlozi  causes  the 
death  of  a  Zulu,  the  killino-  of  his  tamaniu  causes  the 
death  of  a  Banks  Islander,  and  the  killing  of  the 
animal  in  which  his  life  is  stowed  away  causes  the 
death  of  the  giant  or  warlock  in  the  fairy  tale. 

Thus  it  appears  that  the  story  of  "  The  giant  who 
had  no  heart  in  his  body  "  furnishes  the  key  to  the 
religious  aspect  of  totemism,  that  is,  to  the  relation 
which  is  supposed  to  subsist  between  a  man  and  his 
totem.     The  totem,  if  I  am  right,  is  simply  the  recep- 

^  (Sir)    George    Grey,  Journals    of         ^  Fison  and  Howitt,  Kamilaroi  and 
Two  Expeditions  of  Discovery  in  Norih-      Kiu-nai,^.   169. 
West  and  Western  Australia,  ii.  228  sq. 


TOTEM  ISM  339 


tacle  In  which  a  man  keeps  his  Hfe,  as  Punchkin  kept 
his  Hfe  in  a  parrot,  and  Bidasari  kept  her  soul  in  a 
golden  fish.  It  is  no  valid  objection  to  this  view  that 
when  a  savage  has  both  a  sex  totem  and  a  tribal  totem 
his  life  must  be  bound  up  with  two  different  animals, 
the  death  of  either  of  which  would  entail  his  own.  If 
a  man  has  more  vital  places  than  one  in  his  body,  why, 
the  savage  may  think,  should  he  not  have  more  vital 
places  than  one  outside  it  .-*  Why,  since  he  can  exter- 
nalise his  life,  should  he  not  transfer  one  portion  of  it 
to  one  animal  and  another  to  another }  The  divisi- 
bility of  life,  or,  to  put  it  otherwise,  the  plurality  of 
souls,  is  an  idea  suggested  by  many  familiar  facts, 
and  has  commended  itself  to  philosophers  like  Plato 
as  well  as  to  savages.  It  is  only  when  the  notion 
of  a  soul,  from  being  a  quasi -scientific  hypothesis, 
becomes  a  theological  dogma  that  its  unity  and  indi- 
visibility are  insisted  upon  as  essential.  The  savage, 
unshackled  by  dogma,  is  free  to  explain  the  facts  of 
life  by  the  assumption  of  as  many  souls  as  he  thinks 
necessary.  Hence,  for  example,  the  Caribs  supposed 
that  there  was  one  soul  in  the  head,  another  in  the 
heart,  and  other  souls  at  all  the  places  where  an  artery 
is  felt  pulsating.^  Some  of  the  Hidatsa  Indians  explain 
the  phenomena  of  gradual  death,  when  the  extremities 
appear  dead  first,  by  supposing  that  man  has  four 
souls,  and  that  they  quit  the  body,  not  simultaneously, 
but  one  after  the  other,  dissolution  being  only  complete 
when  all  four  have  departed.-  The  Laos  suppose  that 
the  body  is  the  seat  of  thirty  spirits,  which  reside  in 
the  hands,  the  feet,  the  mouth,  the  eyes,  etc.^     Hence, 

1  De      la      Borde,      "Relation     de  ^  Washington  Matthews,  77/^ ///(AzAa 

rOrigine,  etc.  des  Caraibes,"  p.   15,  in  Indians,  p.  50. 

Recueil  de  divers  Voyages  faits  en  Afri-  ^  Bastian,    Die    Vclkei-  des   bstlicheii 

que  el  en  I'Amerique  (Paris,  1684).  Asien,  iii.  248. 


340  TOTEM  ISM 


from  the  primitive  point  of  view,  it  is  perfectly  possible 
that  a  savage  should  have  one  soul  in  his  sex  totem, 
and  another  in  his  tribal  totem.  However,  as  I  have 
observed,  sex  totems  occur  nowhere  but  in  Australia  ;  so 
that  as  a  rule  the  savage  who  practises  totemism  need 
not  have  more  than  one  soul  out  of  his  body  at  a  time. 
If  this  explanation  of  the  totem  as  a  receptacle  in 
which  a  man  keeps  his  soul  or  one  of  his  souls  is 
correct,  we  should  expect  to  find  some  totemistic 
tribes  of  whom  it  is  expressly  stated  that  every  man 
amongst  them  is  believed  to  keep  at  least  one  soul 
permanently  out  of  his  body,  and  that  the  destruction 
of  this  external  soul  is  supposed  to  entail  the  death  of 
its  owner.  Such  a  tribe  are  the  Battas  of  Sumatra. 
The  Battas  are  divided  into  exogamous  clans  {inai'gas) 
with  descent  in  the  male  line  ;  and  each  clan  is  for- 
bidden to  eat  the  flesh  of  a  particular  animal.  One 
clan  may  not  eat  the  tiger,  another  the  ape,  another 
the  crocodile,  another  the  dog,  another  the  cat,  another 
the  dove,  another  the  white  buffalo.  The  reason  given 
by  members  of  a  clan  for  abstaining  from  the  flesh  of 
the  particular  animal  is  either  that  they  are  descended 
from  animals  of  that  species,  and  that  their  souls  after 
death  may  transmigrate  into  the  animals,  or  that  they 
or  their  forefathers  have  been  under  certain  obligations 
to  the  animals.  Sometimes,  but  not  always,  the  clan 
bears  the  name  of  the  animal.^     Thus  the  Battas  have 


^  I.    15.    Neumann,    "  Het   Pane-  en  Wilken,    Over  de  verwantschap  en  het 

Bila  -  stroomgebied      op      het      eiland  htnvelijks-en  erfrecht  bij  de  volkau  van 

Sumatra,"   Tijdschiift  van  het  A'eder-  het  maleische  ras,  pp.  20  sq.,  36;   id., 

landsch  Aardnjks.    Geiiootsch.,  Tvveede  lets  over  de  Papoewas    van    de    Geel- 

Serie,   dl.    iii.    Afdeeling :   meer  uitge-  vinkshaai,    p.     27    sq.     (reprint    from 

breide    artikelen,    No.    2,   p.    311    sq.\  Bijdragen  tot  de  Taal-La7td-en  Volkett- 

za'. ,  dl.  iv.  No.  i,p.  8  jf^. ;  Van  Hoevell.  kintde  van  Ned. -Indie,   5e  Volgreeks 

"lets  over 't  oorlogvoeren  der  Batta's,"  n.)  \  Journal  Ant hrop.  Inst.    ix.    295; 

Tijdschrift    voor    N^ederlandsch    Indie,  Backer,  UArchipel  Indien,  p.  470. 
N.     S.    vii.    (1878)    p.    434;     G.    A. 


TOTEM  ISM  341 


totemism  in  full.  But,  further,  each  Batta  believes 
that  he  has  seven  or,  on  a  more  moderate  computation, 
three  souls.  One  of  these  souls  is  always  outside  the 
body,  but  nevertheless  whenever  it  dies,  however  far 
away  it  may  be  at  the  time,  that  same  moment  the 
man  dies  also.^  The  writer  who  mentions  this  belief 
says  nothing  about  the  Batta  totems ;  but  on  the 
analogy  of  the  Australian  and  Central  American 
evidence  we  can  scarcely  avoid  concluding  that  the 
external  soul,  whose  death  entails  the  death  of  the 
man,  must  be  housed  in  the  totem  animal  or  plant. 

Against  this  view  it  can  hardly  be  thought  to  mili- 
tate that  the  Batta  does  not  in  set  terms  affirm  his 
external  soul  to  be  in  his  totem,  but  alleges  other, 
though  hardly  contradictory,  grounds  for  respecting 
the  sacred  animal  or  plant  of  his  clan.  For  if  a  savage 
seriously  believes  that  his  life  is  bound  up  with  an 
external  object,  it  is  in  the  last  degree  unlikely  that 
he  will  let  any  stranger  into  the  secret.  In  all  that 
touches  his  inmost  life  and  beliefs  the  savage  is  exceed- 
ingly  suspicious  and  reserved  ;  Europeans  have  resided 
among  savages  for  years  without  discovering  some  of 
their  capital  articles  of  faith,  and  in  the  end  the  dis- 
covery has  often  been  the  result  of  accident.  Above 
all,  the  savage  lives  in  an  intense  and  perpetual  dread 
of  assassination  by  sorcery  ;  the  most  trifling  relics  of 
his  person — the  clippings  of  his  hair  and  nails,  his 
spittle,  the  remnants  of  his  food,  his  very  name — all 
these  may,  he  fancies,  be  turned  by  the  sorcerer  to  his 
destruction,  and  he  is  therefore  anxiously  careful  to 
conceal  or  destroy  them.     But  if  in  matters  such   as 


^  B.  Hagen,  "  Beitrage  zur  Kennt-  kiinde,  xxviii.  514.  J.  B.  Neumann 
niss  der  Battareligion,"  Tijdschrift  {op.  cit.  dl.  iii.  No.  2,  p.  299)  is  the 
voor   Indische    Taal-Land-en    Volken-      authority  for  the  seven  souls. 


342  DEATH  AND  RESURRECTION  chap. 

these,  which  are  but  the  outposts  and  outworks  of  his 
life,  he  is  shy  and  secretive  to  a  degree,  how  close 
must  be  the  concealment,  how  impenetrable  the  reserve 
in  which  he  enshrouds  the  inner  keep  and  citadel  of 
his  being !  When  the  princess  in  the  fairy  tale  asks 
the  giant  where  he  keeps  his  soul,  he  generally  gives 
false  or  evasive  answers,  and  it  is  only  after  much 
coaxing  and  wheedling  that  the  secret  is  at  last  wrung 
from  him.  In  his  jealous  reticence  the  giant  resembles 
the  timid  and  furtive  savage ;  but  whereas  the 
exigencies  of  the  story  demand  that  the  giant  should 
at  last  reveal  his  secret,  no  such  obligation  is  laid 
on  the  savage ;  and  no  inducement  that  can  be 
offered  is  likely  to  tempt  him  to  imperil  his  soul  by 
revealing  its  hiding-place  to  a  stranger.  It  is  there- 
fore no  matter  for  surprise  that  the  central  mystery  of 
the  savage's  life  should  so  long  have  remained  a  secret, 
and  that  we  should  be  left  to  piece  it  together  from 
scattered  hints  and  fragments  and  from  the  recol- 
lections of  it  which  linger  in  fairy  tales. 

This  view  of  totemism  throws  light  on  a  class  of 
religious  rites  of  which  no  adequate  explanation,  so  far 
as  I  am  aware,  has  yet  been  offered.  Amongst  many 
savage  tribes,  especially  such  as  are  known  to  practise 
totemism,  it  is  customary  for  lads  at  puberty  to  undergo 
certain  initiatory  rites,  of  which  one  of  the  commonest 
is  a  pretence  of  killing  the  lad  and  bringing  him  to  life 
again.  Such  rites  become  intelligible  if  w^e  suppose 
that  their  substance  consists  in  extracting  the  youth's 
soul  in  order  to  transfer  it  to  his  totem.  For  the 
extraction  of  his  soul  would  naturally  be  supposed  to 
kill  the  youth  or,  at  least,  to  throw  him  into  a  death- 
like trance,  which  the  savage  hardly  distinguishes  from 
death.      His  recovery  would  then  be  attributed  either 


A  T  INITIA  TION  343 


to  the  gradual  recovery  of  his  system  from  the  violent 
shock  which  it  had  received,  or,  more  probably,  to  the 
infusion  into  him  of  fresh  life  drawn  from  the  totem. 
Thus  the  essence  of  these  initiatory  rites,  so  far  as 
they  consist  in  a  simulation  of  death  and  resurrection, 
would  be  an  exchange  of  life  or  souls  between  the 
man  and  his  totem.  The  primitive  belief  in  the  possi- 
bility of  such  an  exchange  of  souls  comes  clearly  out 
in  the  story  of  the  Basque  hunter  who  affirmed  that 
he  had  been  killed  by  a  bear,  but  that  the  bear  had, 
after  killing  him,  breathed  its  own  soul  into  him,  so 
that  the  bear's  body  was  now  dead,  but  he  himself  was 
a  bear,  being  animated  by  the  bear's  soul.^  This 
revival  of  the  dead  hunter  as  a  bear  is  exactly  analo- 
gous to  what,  if  I  am  right,  is  supposed  to  take  place 
in  the  totemistic  ceremony  of  killing  a  lad  at  puberty 
and  bringing  him  to  life  again.  The  lad  dies  as  a 
man  and  comes  to  life  again  as  an  animal  ;  the  animal's 
soul  is  now  in  him,  and  his  human  soul  is  in  the 
animal.  With  good  right,  therefore,  does  he  call  him- 
self a  Bear  or  a  Wolf,  etc.,  according  to  his  totem  ; 
and  with  good  right  does  he  treat  the  bears  or  the 
wolves,  etc.,  as  his  brethren,  since  in  these  animals  are 
lodo-ed  the  souls  of  himself  and  his  kindred. 

Examples  of  this  supposed  death  and  resurrection 
at  initiation  are  the  following.  Among  some  of  the 
Australian  tribes  of  New  South  Wales,  when  lads  are 
initiated,  it  is  thought  that  a  being  called  Thuremlin 
takes  each  lad  to  a  distance,  kills  him,  and  sometimes 
cuts  him  up,,  after  which  he  restores  him  to  life  and 
knocks  out  a  tooth. -^      In  one  part  of  Queensland  the 


1  Th.  Benfey,  Pantschatantra,  i.  128      some   Tribes   of    New    South   Wales,' 
sq.  Jouni.  Anthrop.  Instit.  xiv.  358. 

2  A.    L.    P.    Cameron,    "  Notes    on 


344  DEATH  AND  RESURRECTION  chap. 

humming  sound  of  the  Bullroarer,  which  is  swung  at 
the  initiatory  rites,  is  said  to  be  the  noise  made  by  the 
wizards  in  swallowing  the  boys  and  bringing  them  up 
again  as  young  men.  "  The  Ualaroi  of  the  Upper 
Darling  River  say  that  the  boy  meets  a  ghost  which 
kills  him  and  brings  him  to  life  again  as  a  man."^ 
This  resurrection  appears  to  be  represented  at  the 
initiatory  rites  by  the  following  ceremony.  An  old 
man,  disguised  with  stringy  bark  fibre,  lies  down  in  a 
grave,  and  is  lightly  covered  up  with  sticks  and  earth, 
and  as  far  as  possible  the  natural  appearance  of  the 
ground  is  restored,  the  excavated  earth  being  carried 
away.  The  buried  man  holds  a  small  bush  in  his 
hand  ;  it  appears  to  be  growing  in  the  soil,  and  other 
bushes  are  stuck  in  the  soil  to  heighten  the  effect. 
The  novices  are  then  brought  to  the  edge  of  the  grave, 
and  a  song  is  sung,  in  which  the  only  words  used  are 
the  "class -name"  of  the  buried  man  and  the  word  for 
stringy  bark  fibre.  Gradually,  as  the  song  continues, 
the  bush  held  by  the  buried  man  begins  to  quiver  and 
then  to  move  more  and  more,  and  finally  the  man  him- 
self starts  up  from  the  grave.-  Similarly,  Fijian  lads 
at  initiation  were  shown  a  row  of  apparently  dead  men, 
covered  with  blood,  their  bodies  seemingly  cut  open, 
and  their  entrails  protruding.      But  at  a  yell  from  the 

1  A.  W.  Howitt,  "On  Australian  religious  mysteries.  As  a  sacred  in- 
Medicine  Men," /<??/;-«.  Aiithrop.  Inst.  strument  it  also  occurs  in  Western 
xvi.  47  sq.  On  the  Bullroarer  (a  piece  ^Africa  (R.  F.  Burton,  Abeokuta  and  the 
of  wood  fastened  to  a  cord  or  thong  and  Cameroons  Alonntains,  i.  197  sq.; 
swung  round  so  as  to  produce  a  boom-  Bouche,  La  Cote  des  Esclaves,  p.  124), 
ing  sound),  see  A.  Lang,  Custom  and  and  in  New  Guinea  (J.  Chalmers, 
3Iyth,  p.  29  sqq.  The  religious  use  of  Pio7ieering  m  New  Gtiinea,  p.  85). 
the  Bullroarer  is  best  known  in  Aus-  2  a.  W.  Howitt,  "On  some  Aus- 
tralia, but  in  the  essay  just  referred  to  tralian  ceremonies  of  initiation,  "/i;?/;-«. 
Mr.  Andrew  Lang  has  shown  that  Anthrop.  Inst.  xiii.  453  sq.  The 
the  instrument  has  been  similarly  "class -name"  is  the  name  of  the 
employed  not  only  in  South  Africa  totemic  division  to  which  the  man 
and  by  the  Zunis  of  New  Mexico,  but  belongs, 
also   by   the    ancient    Greeks    in    their 


A  T  INITIA  TION  345 


priest  the  pretended  dead  men  sprang  to  their  feet  and 
ran  to  the  river  to  cleanse  themselves  from  the  blood 
and  entrails  of  pigs  with  which  they  had  been  be- 
smeared.^ 

In  the  valley  of  the  Congo  initiatory  rites  of  this 
sort  are  common.  In  some  places  they  are  called 
Ndembo.  "  In  the  practice  of  Ndembo  the  initiating 
doctors  get  some  one  to  fall  down  in  a  pretended  fit, 
and  in  that  state  he  is  carried  away  to  an  enclosed 
place  outside  the  town.  This  is  called  '  dying  Ndembo.' 
Others  follow  suit,  generally  boys  and  girls,  but  often 
young  men  and  women.  .  .  .  They  are  supposed  to 
have  died.  But  the  parents  and  friends  supply  food, 
and  after  a  period  varying,  according  to  custom,  from 
three  months  to  three  years,  it  is  arranged  that  the 
doctor  shall  bring  them  to  life  again.  .  .  .  When  the 
doctor's  fee  has  been  paid,  and  money  (goods)  saved 
for  a  feast,  the  Ndembo  people  are  brought  to  life.  At 
first  they  pretend  to  know  no  one  and  nothing  ;  they 
do  not  even  know  how  to  masticate  food,  and  friends 
have  to  perform  that  office  for  them.  They  want 
everything  nice  that  any  one  uninitiated  may  have,  and 
beat  them  if  it  is  not  granted,  or  even  strangle  and  kill 
people.  They  do  not  get  into  trouble  for  this,  because 
it  is  thought  that  they  do  not  know  better.  Some- 
times they  carry  on  the  pretence  of  talking  gibberish, 
and  behaving  as  if  they  had  returned  from  the  spirit- 
world.  After  this  they  are  known  by  another  name, 
peculiar  to  those  who  have  '  died  Ndembo.'  .  .  ,  We 
hear  of  the  custom  far  along  on  the  upper  river,  as  well 
as  in  the  cataract  region."  '"     The  following  account  of 


^  L.  Fison,  "The  Nanga,  or  sacred  2  \v    H.  Bentley,  Life  on  the  Congo 

stone  enclosure    of   Wainimala,    Fiji,"      (London,  1887),  p.  78  sq. 
Joitrn.  Anthrop.  Inst.  xiv.  22. 


346  DEATH  AND  RESURRECTION  chap. 

the  rites,  as  practised  in  this  part  of  Africa,  was  given 
to  Bastian  by  an  interpreter.  "  In  the  land  of  Ambamba 
every  one  must  die  once,  and  when  the  fetish  priest 
shakes  his  calabash  against  a  village,  all  the  men  and 
lads  whose  hour  is  come  fall  into  a  state  of  lifeless 
torpidity,  from  which  they  generally  awake  after  three 
days.  But  if  the  fetish  loves  a  man  he  carries  him 
away  into  the  bush  and  buries  him  in  the  fetish  house, 
often  for  many  years.  When  he  comes  to  life  again, 
he  begins  to  eat  and  drink  as  before,  but  his  under- 
standing is  gone  and  the  fetish  man  must  teach  him 
and  direct  him  in  every  motion,  like  the  smallest  child. 
At  first  this  can  only  be  done  with  a  stick,  but  gradually 
his  senses  return,  so  that  it  is  possible  to  talk  with 
him,  and  when  his  education  is  complete,  the  priest 
brings  him  back  to  his  parents.  They  would  seldom 
recognise  their  son  but  for  the  express  assurances  of 
the  fetish  priest,  who  moreover  recalls  previous  events 
to  their  memory.  He  who  has  not  gone  through  the 
ceremony  of  the  new  birth  in  Ambamba  is  universally 
looked  down  upon  and  is  not  admitted  to  the  dances." 
During  the  period  of  initiation  the  novice  is  sym- 
pathetically united  to  the  fetish  by  which  his  life  is 
henceforward  determined.^  The  novice,  plunged  in 
the  magic  sleep  or  death-like  trance  within  the  sacred 
hut,  "beholds  a  bird  or  other  object  with  which  his 
existence  is  thenceforward  sympathetically  bound  up, 
just  as  the  life  of  the  young  Indian  is  bound  up  with 
the  animal  which  he  sees  in  his  dreams  at  puberty."  - 


1  A.  Bastian,  Ein  Besuch  in  San  H.  H.  Johnston  in  Proceed.  Royal 
Salvador,  pp.  82  sq.  86.  Geogr.  Soc.  N.  S.  v.  (18S3)  p.  572  sq., 

2  Bastian,  Die  deutsche  Expedition  and  in  Joiirn.  Anthrop.  Inst.  xiii. 
an  der  loango-A'iiste,  ii.  183  ;  cp.  id.,  472;  E.  Delmar  Morgan,  in  Proceed. 
pp.   15-18,  30  sq.      On  these  initiatory  Royal  Geogr.  Soc.  N.  S.  vi.   193. 

rites    in    the    Congo    region    see    also 


A  T  INITIA  TION  347 


Rites  of  this  sort  were  formerly  observed  in  Ouoja, 
on  the  west  coast  of  Africa,  to  the  north  of  the  Congo. 
They  are  thus  described  by  an  old  writer  : — "  They 
have  another  ceremony  which  they  call  Belli- Paaro,  but 
it  is  not  for  everybody.  For  it  is  an  incorporation  in 
the  assembly  of  the  spirits,  and  confers  the  right  of 
entering  their  groves,  that  is  to  say,  of  going  and  eat- 
ing the  offerings  which  the  simple  folk  bring  thither. 
The  initiation  or  admission  to  the  Belli -Paaro  is 
celebrated  every  twenty  or  twenty -five  years.  The 
initiated  recount  marvels  of  the  ceremony,  saying  that 
they  are  roasted,  that  they  entirely  change  their  habits 
and  life,  and  that  they  receive  a  spirit  quite  different 
from  that  of  other  people  and  quite  new  lights.  The 
badge  of  membership  consists  in  some  lines  traced 
on  the  neck  between  the  shoulders  ;  the  lines  seem  to 
be  pricked  with  a  needle.  Those  who  have  this  mark 
pass  for  persons  of  spirit,  and  when  they  have  attained 
a  certain  age  they  are  allowed  a  voice  in  all  public 
assemblies  ;  whereas  the  uninitiated  are  regarded  as 
profane,  impure,  and  ignorant  persons,  who  dare  not 
express  an  opinion  on  any  subject  of  importance. 
When  the  time  for  the  ceremony  has  come,  it  is 
celebrated  as  follows  :  By  order  of  the  king  a  place  is 
appointed  in  the  forest,  whither  they  bring  the  youths 
who  have  not  been  marked,  not  without  much  crying 
and  weeping  ;  for  it  is  impressed  upon  the  youths  that 
in  order  to  undergo  this  change  it  is  necessary  to  suffer 
death.  So  they  dispose  of  their  property,  as  if  it 
were  all  over  with  them.  There  are  always  some  of 
the  initiated  beside  the  novices  to  instruct  them. 
They  teach  them  to  dance  a  certain  dance  called 
killing,  and  to  sing  verses  in  praise  of  Belli.  Above  all, 
they  are  very  careful  not  to  let  them  die   of  hunger, 


348  DEATH  AND  RESURRECTION  chap. 

because  if  they  did  so,  it  is  much  to  be  feared  that  the 
spiritual  resurrection  would  profit  them  nothing.  This 
manner  of  life  lasts  five  or  six  years,  and  is  comfortable 
enough,  for  there  is  a  village  in  the  forest,  and  they 
amuse  themselves  with  hunting  and  fishing.  Other 
lads  are  brought  thither  from  time  to  time,  so  that  the 
last  comers  have  not  long  to  stay.  No  woman  or 
uninitiated  person  is  suffered  to  pass  within  four  or  five 
leagues  of  the  sacred  wood.  When  their  instruction  is 
completed,  they  are  taken  from  the  wood  and  shut  up 
in  small  huts  made  for  the  purpose.  Here  they  begin 
once  more  to  hold  communion  with  mankind  and  to 
talk  with  the  women  who  bring  them  their  food.  It 
is  amusing-  to  see  their  affected  simplicity.  They  pre- 
tend to  know  no  one,  and  to  be  ignorant  of  all  the 
customs  of  the  country,  such  as  the  customs  of  washing 
themselves,  rubbing  themselves  with  oil,  etc.  When 
they  enter  these  huts,  their  bodies  are  all  covered  with 
the  feathers  of  birds,  and  they  wear  caps  of  bark  which 
hang  down  before  their  faces.  But  after  a  time  they 
are  dressed  in  clothes  and  taken  to  a  great  open  place, 
where  all  the  people  of  the  neighbourhood  are 
assembled.  Here  the  novices  give  the  first  proof  of 
their  capacity  by  dancing  a  dance  which  is  called  the 
dance  of  Belli.  After  the  dance  is  over,  the  novices 
are  taken  to  the  houses  of  their  parents  by  their 
instructors."  ^ 

Among  the  Indians  of  Virginia,  an  initiatory  cere- 
mony, called  Huskanaw,  took  place  every  sixteen 
or  twenty  years,  or  oftener,  as  the  young  men 
happened  to  grow  up.  The  youths  were  kept  in 
solitary  confinement  in  the  woods  for  several  months, 

1  Dapper,    Description  de  PAfrique,   p.   268  sq.      Dapper's  account  has  been 
abbreviated  in  the  text. 


A  T  INITIA  TION  349 


receiving  no  food  but  an  infusion  of  some  intoxicating 
roots,  so  that  they  went  raving  mad,  and  continued  in 
this  state  eighteen  or  twenty,  days.  "  Upon  this 
occasion  it  is  pretended  that  these  poor  creatures  drink 
so  much  of  the  water  of  Lethe  that  they  perfectly  lose 
the  remembrance  of  all  former  things,  even  of  their 
parents,  their  treasure,  and  their  language.  When  the 
doctors  find  that  they  have  drank  sufficiently  of  the 
Wysoccan  (so  they  call  this  mad  potion),  they  gradually 
restore  them  to  their  senses  again  by  lessening  the 
intoxication  of  their  diet ;  but  before  they  are  perfectly 
well  they  bring  them  back  into  their  towns,  while  they 
are  still  wild  and  crazy  through  the  violence  of  the 
medicine.  After  this  they  are  very  fearful  of  dis- 
covering anything  of  their  former  remembrance  ;  for 
if  such  a  thing  should  happen  to  any  of  them,  they 
must  immediately  be  Huskanawd  again  ;  and  the 
second  time  the  usage  is  so  severe  that  seldom  any 
one  escapes  with  life.  Thus  they  must  pretend  to 
have  forgot  the  very  use  of  their  tongues,  so  as  not 
to  be  able  to  speak,  nor  understand  anything  that  is 
spoken,  till  they  learn  it  again.  Now,  whether  this  be 
real  or  counterfeit,  I  don't  know  ;  but  certain  it  is  that 
they  will  not  for  some  time  take  notice  of  any  body 
nor  any  thing  with  which  they  were  before  acquainted, 
being  still  under  the  guard  of  their  keepers,  who 
constantly  wait  upon  them  everywhere  till  they  have 
learnt  all  things  perfectly  over  again.  Thus  they 
unlive  their  former  lives,  and  commence  men  by 
forgetting  that  they  ever  have  been  boys."  ^ 

Among  some  of  the  Indian  tribes  of  North  America 
there  are  certain  religious  associations  which  are  only 
open  to  candidates  who  have  gone  through  a  pretence 

^  (Beverley's)  History  of  Virginia  (London,  1722),  p.  177  sq. 


350  DEATH  AND  RESURRECTION 


of  being  killed  and  brought  to  life  again.  Captain 
Carver  witnessed  the  admission  of  a  candidate  to  an 
association  called  "  the  friendly  society  of  the  Spirit  " 
among  the  Naudowessies.  The  candidate  knelt 
before  the  chief,  who  told  him  that  "  he  himself 
was  now  agitated  by  the  same  spirit  which  he  should 
in  a  few  moments  communicate  to  him  ;  that  it  would 
strike  him  dead,  but  that  he  would  instantly  be  re- 
stored again  to  life.  ...  As  he  spoke  this,  he  appeared 
to  be  greatly  agitated,  till  at  last  his  emotions  became  so 
violent  that  his  countenance  was  distorted  and  his  whole 
frame  convulsed.  At  this  juncture  he  threw  something 
that  appeared  both  in  shape  and  colour  like  a  small 
bean  at  the  young  man,  which  seemed  to  enter  his 
mouth,  and  he  instantly  fell  as  motionless  as  if  he  had 
been  shot."  For  a  time  the  man  lay  like  dead,  but 
under  a  shower  of  blows  he  showed  signs  of  conscious- 
ness, and  finally,  discharging  from  his  mouth  the  bean, 
or  whatever  it  was  the  chief  had  thrown  at  him,  he 
came  to  life.^  In  other  tribes  the  instrument  by  which 
the  candidate  is  apparently  slain  is  the  medicine-bag. 
The  bag  is  made  of  the  skin  of  an  animal  (such  as  the 
otter,  wild  cat,  serpent,  bear,  racoon,  wolf,  owl,  weasel), 
of  which  it  roughly  preserves  the  shape.  Each  mem- 
ber of  the  society  has  one  of  these  bags,  in  which  he 
keeps  the  odds  and  ends  that  make  up  his  "  medicine" 
or  charms.  "They  believe  that  from  the  miscellaneous 
contents  in  the  belly  of  the  skin  bag  or  animal  there 
issues  a  spirit  or  breath,  which  has  the  power,  not  only 
to  knock  down  and  kill  a  man,  but  also  to  set  him  up 
and  restore  him  to  life."  The  mode  of  killing  a  man 
with  one  of  these  medicine-bacjs  is  to  thrust  it  at  him  ; 

1  J.     Carver,     Travels    through    the  Interior  Parts  of  North    America,    pp. 
271-275. 


A  T  INITIA  TION  3  5 1 


he   falls   like   dead,   but   a   second   thrust    of   the    bag 
restores  him  to  life.^ 

A  ceremony  witnessed  by  Jewitt  during  his 
captivity  among  the  Indians  of  Nootka  Sound  doubt- 
less belongs  to  this  class  of  customs.  The  Indian 
king  or  chief  "discharged  a  pistol  close  to  his  son's 
ear,  who  immediately  fell  down  as  if  killed,  upon 
which  all  the  women  of  the  house  set  up  a  most 
lamentable  cry,  tearing  handfuls  of  hair  from  their 
heads,  and  exclaiming  that  the  prince  was  dead  ;  at  the 
same  time  a  great  number  of  the  inhabitants  rushed 
into  the  house  armed  with  their  daggers,  muskets,  etc., 
inquiring  the  cause  of  their  outcry.  These  were  im- 
mediately followed  by  two  others  dressed  in  wolf  skins, 
with  masks  over  their  faces  representing  the  head  of 
that  animal.  The  latter  came  in  on  their  hands  and 
feet  in  the  manner  of  a  beast,  and  taking  up  the  prince, 
carried  him  off  upon  their  backs,  retiring  in  the  same 
manner  as  they  entered.""  In  another  place  Jewitt 
mentions  that  the  young  prince — a  lad  of  about  eleven 
years  of  age — wore  a  mask  in  imitation  of  a  wolf's 
head.^  Now,  as  the  Indians  of  this  part  of  America 
are  divided  into  totem  clans,  of  which  the  Wolf  clan  is 
one  of  the  principal,  and  as  the  members  of  each  clan 
are  in  the  habit  of  wearing  some  portion  of  the  totem 
animal  about  their  person,'*  it  is  probable  that  the 
prince  belonged  to  the  Wolf  clan,  and  that  the 
ceremony  described  by  Jewitt  represented  the  killing 

^  Carver,  op.  cit.  p.  277  sq.;  School-  *  Holmberg,  "  Ueber  die  Volker  des 

craft,  Indian   Tribes,  iii.    287,   v.    430  russischen  Amerika,"  Acta  Soc.  Scient. 

sqq.;  Kohl,  Kitschi-Gami,  i.  64-70.  Fennicae,   iv.    (Helsingfors,    1856)   pp. 

2  Narrative  of  the  Advetitures  and  ^^2  sqq.,  328  ;  Petroff,  Report  on  the 
Sufferings  of  John  R.  Jewitt  (Middle-  ^'P"i^(''>"'  '^f-_  of  Alaska,  p.  165  sq.; 
town,  1820),  p.   119.  ^-    ^^™"^^'  ^'^    ThnkU-Indianer,    p. 

112;     R.    C.    Mayne,    Four  years    in 

3  Id.,  p.  44.  For  the  age  of  the  British  Cohwibia  and  Vancouver  Is- 
prince,  see  id.,  p.  35.  land,  p.  257  sq.,  268. 


352  DEATH  AND  RESURRECTION  chap. 

of  the  lad  in  order  that  he  mio-ht  be  born  anew  as  a 
wolf,  much  in  the  same  way  that  the  Basque  hunter 
supposed  himself  to  have  been  killed  and  to  have  come 
to  life  again  as  a  bear.  The  Toukaway  Indians  of 
Texas,  one  of  whose  totems  is  the  wolf,  have  a 
ceremony  in  which  men,  dressed  in  wolf  skins,  run 
about  on  all  fours,  howling  and  mimicking  wolves. 
At  last  they  scratch  up  a  living  tribesman,  who  has 
been  buried  on  purpose,  and  putting  a  bow  and  arrows 
in  his  hands,  bid  him  do  as  the  wolves  do — rob,  kill, 
and  murder.^  The  ceremony  probably  forms  part  of 
an  initiatory  rite  like  the  resurrection  from  the  grave 
of  the  old  man  in  the  Australian  rites. 

The  people  of  Rook,  an  island  east  of  New 
Guinea,  hold  festivals  at  which  one  or  two  disguised 
men,  their  heads  covered  with  wooden  masks,  go 
dancing  through  the  village,  followed  by  all  the  other 
men.  They  demand  that  the  circumcised  boys  who 
have  not  yet  been  swallowed  by  Marsaba  (the  devil) 
shall  be  given  up  to  them.  The  boys,  trembling  and 
shrieking,  are  delivered  to  them,  and  must  creep  be- 
tween the  legs  of  the  disguised  men.  Then  the  pro- 
cession moves  through  the  village  again,  and  announces 
that  Marsaba  has  eaten  up  the  boys,  and  will  not  dis- 
gorge them  till  he  receives  a  present  of  pigs,  taro,  etc. 
So  all  the  villagers,  according  to  their  means,  contri- 
bute provisions,  which  are  then  consumed  in  the  name 
of  Marsaba.^     In  New  Britain  all  males  are  members 


1   Schoolcraft,  Indian  Tribes,  v.  683.  mythological  signification,  '  holding  the 

In  a  letter  dated  i6th  Dec.  1887,  Mr.  earth'  {hatch).      He  forms  one  of  their 

A.     S.    Gatschet,    of    the     Bureau     of  totem  clans,  and  they  have  had  a  dance 

Ethnology,  Washington,  writes  to  me  :  in  his  honor,  danced  by  the  males  only, 

"Among  the  Toukavve  whom  in  1884  who  carried  sticks." 
I   found  at   Fort    Griffin   [?],   Texas,    I  ^   Reina,  "  Ueber  die  Bewohner  der 

noticed  that  they  never  kill  the  big  or  Insel  Rook,"  Zeitschrift  fiir  allgemeine 

gray  wolf,   hatchukiaidn,  which  has  a  Erdkunde,  N.  F.  iv.  (1858)  p.  356  sq. 


A  r  INITIA  TION  3  5  3 


of  an  association  called  the  Duk-duk.  The  boys  are 
admitted  to  it  very  young,  but  are  not  fully  initiated 
till  their  fourteenth  year,  when  they  receive  from  the 
Tubuvan  a  terrible  blow  with  a  cane,  which  is  sup- 
posed to  kill  them.  The  Tubuvan  and  the  Duk-duk 
are  two  disguised  men  who  represent  cassowaries. 
They  dance  with  a  short  hopping  step  in  imitation  of 
the  cassowary.  Each  of  them  wears  a  huge  hat  like 
an  extinguisher,  woven  of  grass  or  palm -fibres  ;  it  is 
six  feet  high,  and  descends  to  the  wearer's  shoulders, 
completely  concealing  his  head  and  face.  From  the 
neck  to  the  knees  the  man's  body  is  hidden  by  a  crino- 
line made  of  the  leaves  of  a  certain  tree  fastened  on 
hoops,  one  above  the  other.  The  Tubuvan  is  regarded 
as  a  female,  the  Duk-duk  as  a  male.  No  woman  may 
see  these  disguised  men.  The  institution  of  the  Duk- 
duk  is  common  to  the  neighbouring  islands  of  New 
Ireland  and  the  Duke  of  York.^ 

Amongst  the  Galela  and  Tobelorese  of  Halmahera, 
an  island  to  the  west  of  New  Guinea,  boys  go  through 
a  form  of  initiation,  part  of  which  seems  to  consist  in  a 
pretence  of  begetting  them  anew.  When  a  number  of 
boys  have  reached  the  proper  age,  their  parents  agree 
to  celebrate  the  ceremony  at  their  common  expense, 
and  they  invite  others  to  be  present  at  it.  A  shed  is 
erected,    and   two   long   tables   are   placed   in   it,   with 

^   R.       Parkinson,       Iin      Bismarck  der  Bismarck  Archipel,   pp.    115 -128. 

Archipel,     pp.     129 -134;     Rev.      G.  The  inhabitants    of    these  islands   are 

Brown,  "Notes  on  the  Duke  of  York  divided  into   two    exogamous    classes, 

Group,    New    Britain,   and    New   Ire-  which  in  the  Duke  of  York  Island  have 

land,"  Joiirn.  Royal  Geogr.  Soc.   xlvii.  two  insects  for  their  totems.      One  of 

(1878)    p.    148   sq.;    H.    H.    Romilly,  the  insects  is  the  waw^'/j- r^/zj^/^jz/j- ;  the 

"The    Islands    of    the    New    Britain  other  is  an  insect  that  mimicks  the  leaf 

Group,"    Proceed.    Royal    Geogr.    Soc.  of  the  horse-chestnut  tree  very  closely. 

N.    S.   ix.   (1887)  p.  II  sq.;    Rev.    G.  Rev..B.  Danks,  "Marriage  customs  of 

Brown,  ib.  p.  17;  W.  Powell,  Wander-  the  New  Britain  Group,"  yi??</-«.  Ait- 

ings  in  a    Wild  Country,   pp.    60-66  ;  throp.  Inst,  xviii.  281  sq. 
C.  Hager,  Kaiser  Wilhelm^s  Land  iind 

VOL.   II  .  2  A 


354  DEATH  AND  RESURRECTION  chap. 

benches  to  match,  one  for  the  men  and  one  for  the 
women.  When  all  the  preparations  have  been  made 
for  a  feast,  a  great  many  skins  of  the  rayfish,  and 
some  pieces  of  a  wood  which  imparts  a  red  colour  to 
water,  are  taken  to  the  shed.  A  priest  or  elder  causes 
a  vessel  to  be  placed  in  the  sight  of  all  the  people,  and 
then  begins,  with  significant  gestures,  to  rub  a  piece  of 
the  wood  with  the  ray-skin.  The  powder  so  produced 
is  put  in  the  vessel,  and  at  the  same  time  the  name  of 
one  of  the  boys  is  called  out.  The  same  proceeding 
is  repeated  for  each  boy.  Then  the  vessels  are  filled 
with  water,  after  which  the  feast  begins.  At  the  third 
cock-crow  the  priest  smears  the  faces  and  bodies  of  the 
boys  with  the  red  water,  which  represents  the  blood  shed 
at  the  perforation  of  the  hymen.  Towards  daybreak 
the  boys  are  taken  to  the  wood,  and  must  hide  behind 
the  largest  trees.  The  men,  armed  with  sword  and 
shield,  accompany  them,  dancing  and  singing.  The 
priest  knocks  thrice  on  each  of  the  trees  behind  which 
a  boy  is  hiding.  All  day  the  boys  stay  in  the  wood, 
exposing  themselves  to  the  heat  of  the  sun  as  much  as 
possible.  In  the  evening  they  bathe  arid  return  to  the 
shed,  where  the  women  supply  them  with  food.^ 

In  the   west   of   Ceram   boys    at  puberty  are  ad- 
mitted to   the   Kakian   association. ^     Modern  writers 

1  J.  G.  F.  Riedel,  "GalelaundTobel-  with  slight  changes  in  Tijdschrift  v. 
oresen,"  Zeitschrift  f.  Ethnologie,  xvii.  Indische  Taal- Land  -  en  Volkenkiinde, 
(1885)  p.  81  sq.  xvi.  1866,  pp.  290-315);  F.  Foamier, 

2  The  Kakian  association  and  its  "  De  Zuidkust  van  Ceram,"  Tijdschrift 
initiatory  ceremonies  have  often  been  v.  Indische  Taal- Land -en  Volkenkiinde, 
described.  See  Valentyn,  Oud  en  xvi.  154  sqq.;  Van  Rees,  Die  Pion- 
nieuw  Oost  -  lulien,  iii.  3  sq.  ;  Von  niers  der  Beschaving  in  Neerlands 
Schmid,  "  Het  Kakihansch  Verbond  Indie,  pp.  92-106;  Van  Hoevell, 
op  het  ciland  Ceram,"  Tijdschrift  v.  Ambon  en  meer  bepaaldelijkde  Oeliasers, 
Neerlands  Indie,  v.  dl.  ii.  (1843)25-  p.  153  sqq.;  Schulze,  "  Ueber  Ceram 
38;  Van  Ekris,  "Het  Ceramsche  und  seine  Bewohner,"  Vei-handl.  d. 
Kalvianverbond, "  Mededeelingen  van  Berliner  Gesell.  f  Anthropologie,  etc. 
zvege  het  Nederland.  Zendelinggenoof-  (1877)  p.  117;  W.  Joest,  "  Beitrage 
schap,    (1865)   ix.    205-226    (repeated  zur    Kenntniss    der    Eingebornen    der 


A  T  I  NIT  I  A  TION  3  5  5 


have  commonly  regarded  this  association  as  primarily 
a  political  league  instituted  to  resist  foreign  domina- 
tion. In  reality  its  objects  are  purely  .religious  and 
social,  though  it  is  possible  that  the  priests  may  have 
occasionally  used  their  powerful  influence  for  political 
ends.  The  society  is  in  fact  merely  one  of  those 
widely-diffused  primitive  institutions,  of  which  a  chief 
object  is  the  initiation  of  young  men.  In  recent  years 
the  true  nature  of  the  association  has  been  duly  recog- 
nised by  the  distinguished  Dutch  ethnologist,  J.  G.  F. 
Riedel.  The  Kakian  house  is  an  oblong  wooden 
shed,  situated  under  the  darkest  trees  in  the  depth  of 
the  forest,  and  is  built  to  admit  so  little  light  that  it  is 
impossible  to  see  what  goes  on  in  it.  Every  village 
has  such  a  house.  Thither  the  boys  who  are  to  be 
initiated  are  conducted  blindfolded,  followed  by  their 
parents  and  relations.  Each  boy  is  led  by  the  hand 
by  two  men,  who  act  as  his  sponsors  or  guardians, 
looking  after  him  during  the  period  of  initiation. 
When  all  are  assembled  before  the  shed,  the  high 
priest  calls  aloud  upon  the  devils.  Immediately  a 
hideous  uproar  is  heard  to  proceed  from  the  shed.  It 
is  made  by  men  with  bamboo  trumpets,  who  have  been 
secretly  introduced  into  the  building  by  a  back  door, 
but  the  women  and  children  think  it  is  made  by  the 
devils,  and  are  much  terrified.-  Then  the  priests  enter 
the  shed,  followed  by  the  boys,  one  at  a  time.  As 
soon  as  each  boy  has  disappeared  within  the  precincts, 
a  dull  chopping  sound  is  heard,  a  fearful  cry  rings  out, 
and  a  sword  or  spear,  dripping  with   blood,  is  thrust 


Insel  Formosa  unci  Ceram,"/./.  (1882),  pp.    107-111.      The  best  accounts  are 

p.    64 ;     Rosenberg,    Der    Malayische  those  of  Valentyn,  Von  Schmid,  Van 

Archipel,  Tp.  318;   Ba.siiSLT\,  Indojiesien,  Ekris,    Van    Rees,   and   Riedel,   which 

i-   145-148  ;  Riedel,  De  sbiik-en  kroes-  are  accordingly  followed  in  the  text. 
harige  rassen  tusschcn  Selcbes  en  Papua, 


356  DEATH  AND  RESURRECTION  chap. 

through  the  roof  of  the  shed.  This  is  a  token  that  the 
boy's  head  has  been  cut  off,  and  that  the  devil  has 
carried  him  away  to  the  other  world,  there  to  regener- 
ate and  transform  him.  So  at  sight  of  the  bloody 
sword  the  mothers  weep  and  wail,  crying  that  the 
devil  has  murdered  their  children.  In  some  places,  it 
would  seem,  the  boys  are  pushed  through  an  opening 
made  in  the  shape  of  a  crocodile's  jaws  or  a  cassowary's 
beak,  and  it  is  then  said  that  the  devil  has  swallowed 
them.  The  boys  remain  in  the  shed  for  five  or  nine 
days.  Sitting  in  the  dark,  they  hear  the  blast  of  the 
bamboo  trumpets,  and  from  time  to  time  the  sound  of 
musket  shots  and  the  clash  of  swords.  Every  day 
they  bathe,  and  their  faces  and  bodies  are  smeared 
with  a  yellow  dye,  to  give  them  the  appearance  of 
having  been  swallowed  by  the  devil.  During  his  stay 
in  the  Kakian  house  each  boy  has  one  or  two  crosses 
tattooed  with  thorns  on  his  breast  or  arm.  When  they 
are  not  sleeping,  the  lads  must  sit  in  a  crouching  pos- 
ture without  moving  a  muscle.  As  they  sit  in  a  row 
cross-legged,  with  their  hands  stretched  out,  the  chief 
takes  his  trumpet,  and  placing  the  mouth  of  it  on  the 
hands  of  each  lad,  speaks  through  it  in  strange  tones, 
imitating  the  voice  of  the  spirits.  He  warns  the  lads, 
under  pain  of  death,  to  observe  the  rules  of  the  Kakian 
society,  and  never  to  reveal  what  has  passed  in  the 
Kakian  house.  The  novices  are  also  told  by  the 
priests  to  behave  well  to  their  blood  relations,  and  are 
taught  the  traditions  and  secrets  of  the  tribe. 

Meantime  the  mothers  and  sisters  of  the  lads  have 

*  gone  home  to  weep  and  mourn.      But  in  a  day  or  two 

the  men  who  acted  as  guardians  or  sponsors  to  the 

novices  return  to  the  village  with  the  glad  tidings  that 

the  devil,  at  the  intercession  of  the  priests,  has  restored 


A  T  INITIA  TION  357 


the  lads  to  life.  The  men  who  bring  this  news  come 
in  a  fainting  state  and  daubed  with  mud,  like  mes- 
sengers freshly  arrived  from  the  nether  world.  Before 
leaving  the  Kakian  house,  each  lad  receives  from  the 
priest  a  stick  adorned  at  both  ends  with  cock's  or 
cassowary's  feathers.  The  sticks  are  supposed  to  have 
been  given  to  the  lads  by  the  devil  at  the  time  when* 
he  restored  them  to  life,  and  they  serve  as  a  token  that 
the  lads  have  been  in  the  spirit -land.  When  they 
return  to  their  homes  they  totter  in  their  walk,  and 
enter  the  house  backward,  as  if  they  had  forgotten  how 
to  walk  properly  ;  or  they  enter  the  house  by  the  back 
door.  If  a  plate  of  food  is  given  to  them,  they  hold  it 
upside  down.  They  remain  dumb,  indicating  their 
wants  by  signs  only.  All  this  is  to  show  that  they  are 
still  under  the  influence  of  the  devil  or  the  spirits. 
Their  sponsors  have  to  teach  them  all  the  common 
acts  of  life,  as  if  they  were  new-born  children. 
Further,  upon  leaving  the  Kakian  house  the  boys  are 
strictly  forbidden  to  eat  of  certain  fruits  until  the  next 
celebration  of  the  rites  has  taken  place.  And  for 
twenty  or  thirty  days  their  hair  may  not  be  combed  by 
their  mothers  or  sisters.  At  the  end  of  that  time  the 
high  priest  takes  them  to  a  lonely  place  in  the  forest, 
and  cuts  off  a  lock  of  hair  from  the  crown  of  each  of 
their  heads.  After  these  initiatory  rites  the  lads  are 
deemed  men,  and  may  marry ;  it  would  be  a  scandal  if 
they  married  before. 

The  simulation  of  death  and  resurrection  or  of  a 
new  birth  at  initiation  appears  to  have  lingered  on,  or 
at  least  to  have  left  traces  of  itself,  among  peoples  who 
have  advanced  far  beyond  the  stage  of  savagery.  Thus, 
after  his  investiture  with  the  sacred  thread  —  the 
symbol   of  his   order  —  a    Brahman  is  called   "twice- 


358  TOTEMISM: 


born."  Manu  says,  "According  to  the  injunction  of 
the  revealed  texts  the  first  birth  of  an  Aryan  is  from 
his  natural  mother,  the  second  happens  on  the  tying 
of  the  girdle  of  Munga  grass,  and  the  third  on  the 
initiation  to  the  performance  of  a  Srauta  sacrifice."^ 
A  pretence  of  killing  the  candidate  appears  to  have 
formed  part  of  the  initiation  to  the  Mithraic  mysteries." 
Thus,  if  I  am  right,  wherever  totemism  is  found, 
and  wherever  a  pretence  is  made  of  killing  and  bringing 
to  life  again  at  initiation,  there  must  exist  or  have 
existed  not  only  a  belief  in  the  possibility  of  perman- 
ently depositing  the  soul  in  some  external  object — 
animal,  plant,  or  what  not — but  an  actual  intention  of 
so  depositing  it.  If  the  question  is  put,  why  do  men 
desire  to  deposit  their  life  outside  their  bodies  ?  the 
answer  can  only  be  that,  like  the  giant  in  the  fairy  tale, 
they  think  it  safer  to  do  so  than  to  carry  it  about  with 
them,  just  as  people  deposit  their  money  with  a  banker 
rather  than  carry  it  on  their  persons.  We  have  seen 
that  at  critical  periods  the  life  or  soul  is  sometimes 
temporarily  deposited  in  a  safe  place  till  the  danger  is 
past.  But  institutions  like  totemism  are  not  resorted 
to  merely  on  special  occasions  of  danger ;  they  are 
systems  into  which  every  one,  or  at  least  every  male, 
is  obliged  to  be  initiated  at  a  certain  period  of  life. 
Now  the  period  of  life  at  which  initiation  takes  place 
is  regularly  puberty  ;  and  this  fact  suggests  that  the 
special  danger  which  totemism  and  systems  like  it  are 
intended  to  obviate  is  supposed  not  to  arise  till  sexual 
maturity  has  been   attained,    in   fact,  that  the  danger 

1  Laws  of  Manu,  ii.    169,  trans,  by       and   Thought    in   India,    pp.    360   sq. 
Biihler ;   Dubois,  Moeurs,  Institutions      366  sq. 

et  Ceremonies  des  Peuples  de  Flnde,  i.  2  Lampridius,     Co/njnodus,    9  ;      C. 

125;  Monier  \\W\\s.ms,  Religions  Life      W.     King,     The     Gnostics    and    their 

Remains,'^  pp.  127,  129. 


ITS  MOTIVE  359 


apprehended  is  believed  to.  attend  the  relation  of  the 
sexes  to  each  other.  It  would  be  easy  to  prove  by 
a  long  array  of  facts  that  the  sexual  relation  is 
associated  in  the  primitive  mind  with  many  super- 
natural perils  ;  but  the  exact  nature  of  the  danger 
apprehended  is  still  obscure.  We  may  hope  that  a 
more  exact  acquaintance  with  savage  modes  of  thought 
will  in  time  disclose  this  central  mystery  of  primitive 
society,  and  will  thereby  furnish  the  clue,  not  only  to  the 
social  aspect  of  totemism  (the  prohibition  of  sexual 
union  between  persons  of  the  same  totem),  but  to  the 
origin  of  the  marriage  system. 


§  5. — Conclusion 

Thus  the  view  that  Balder's  life  was  in  the  mistletoe 
Is  entirely  in  harmony  with  primitive  modes  of  thought. 
It  may  indeed  sound  like  a  contradiction  that,  if  his  life 
was  in  the  mistletoe,  he  should  nevertheless  have  been 
killed  by  a  blow  from  it.  But  when  a  person's  life  is 
conceived  as  embodied  in  a  particular  object,  with  the 
existence  of  which  his  own  existence  is  inseparably 
bound  up,  and  the  destruction  of  which  involves  his 
own,  the  object  in  question  may  be  regarded  and 
spoken  of  indifferently  as  the  person's  life  or  as  his 
death,  as  happens  in  the  fairy  tales.  Hence  if  a  man's 
death  is  in  an  object,  it  is  perfectly  natural  that  he 
should  be  killed  by  a  blow  from  it.  In  the  fairy  tales 
Koshchei  the  Deathless  is  killed  by  a  blow  from  the 
^gg  ^^'^  ^he  stone  in  which  his  life  or  death  is ;  ^  the 
ogres  burst  when  a  certain  grain  of  sand — doubtless 
containing   their  life  or  death — is  carried    over  their 

^  Above,  p.  309. 


36o  LIFE  OF  THE  OAK  chap. 

heads ;  ^  the  magician  dies  when  the  stone  in  which  his 
Hfe  or  death  is  contained  is  put  under  his  pillow  ; "  and 
the  Tartar  hero  is  warned  that  he  may  be  killed  by  the 
golden  arrow  or  golden  sword  in  which  his  soul  has 
been  stowed  away.^ 

The  idea  that  the  life  of  the  oak  was  in  the  mistletoe* 
was  probably  suggested,  as  I  have  said,  by  the  obser- 
vation that  in  winter  the  mistletoe  growing  on  the  oak 
remains  green,  while  the  oak  itself  is  leafless.  But  the 
position  of  the  plant — growing,  not  from  the  ground, 
but  from  the  trunk  or  branches  of  the  tree — mio^ht 
confirm  this  idea.  Primitive  man  might  think  that, 
like  himself,  the  oak-spirit  had  sought  to  deposit  his 
life  in  some  safe  place,  and  for  this  purpose  had  pitched 
on  the  mistletoe,  which,  being  in  a  sense  neither  on 
earth  nor  in  heaven,  was  as  secure  a  place  as  could  be 
found.  At  the  beginning  of  this  chapter  we  saw  that 
primitive  man  seeks  to  preserve  the  life  of  his  human 
divinities  by  keeping  them  in  a  sort  of  intermediate 
position  between  earth  and  heaven,  as  the  place  where 
they  are  least  likely  to  be  assailed  by  the  dangers  that 
encompass  the  life  of  man  on  earth.     We  can  there- 

■     1  Above, p.  3125(7.   2  Above,  p.  308 J^.  British     Popular     Customs,      p.      68. 

^  Above,  p.  324  J-;/.      In  the  myth  the  Mannhardt  {Die  Korndlimonen,  p.    16 

throwing  of  the   weapons   and  of  the  sq.")  has   made   it   probable    that    such 

mistletoe  at  Balder  and  the  blindness  of  sports    are    directly    derived    from    the 

Hodur  who  slew  him  remind  us  of  the  custom    of   killing    a    cock    upon    the 

custom  of  the  Irish  reapers  who  kill  the  harvest-field  as  a  representative  of  the 

corn-spirit  in  the  last  sheaf  by  throwing  corn-spirit   (see   above,   p.    9).       These 

their  sickles  blindfold  at  it.     (See  above,  customs,  therefore,  combined  with  the 

vol.  i.  p.  339).     In  Mecklenburg  a  cock  blindness  of  Hodur  in  the  myth  suggest 

is  sometimes  buried  in  the  ground  and  that   the   man   who   killed   the   human 

a  man  who  is  blindfolded  strikes  at  it  representative    of   the    oak  -  spirit    was 

with  a  flail.      If  he  misses  it,  another  blindfolded,  and  threw  his  weapon  or 

tries,  and  so  on  till  the  cock  is  killed.  the   mistletoe    from  a    little    distance. 

Bartsch,     Sagen,     Marchen    unci    Ge-  After    the    Lapps   had    killed    a    bear 

hriiuche  aiis  Mecklenburg,  ii.  280.      In  — which    was    the    occasion    of  many 

England    on    Shrove    Tuesday    a    hen  superstitious    ceremonies  —  the    bear's 

used  to  be  tied  upon  a  man's  back,  and  skin    was   hung    on    a    post,    and    the 

other  men  blindfolded  struck  at  it  with  women,    blindfolded,    shot    arrows    at 

branches    till    they    killed    it.      Dyer,  it.      Scheffer,  Lapponia,  p.  240. 


IV  IN  THE  MISTLETOE  361 

fore  understand  why  in  modern  folk  -  medicine  the 
mistletoe  is  not  allowed  to  touch  the  ground  ;  if  it 
touches  the  ground,  its  healing  virtue  is  supposed  to 
be  gone.^  This  may  be  a  survival  of  the  old  supersti- 
tion that  the  plant  in  which  the  life  of  the  sacred  tree 
was  concentrated  should  not  be  exposed  to  the  risk 
incurred  by  contact  with  the  ground.  In  an  Indian 
legend,  which  offers  a  parallel  to  the  Balder  myth,  Indra 
promised  the  demon  Namuci  not  to  kill  him  by  day  or 
by  night,  nor  with  what  was  wet  or  what  was  dry.  But 
he  killed  him  in  the  morning  twilight  by  sprinkling 
over  him  the  foam  of  the  sea.^  The  foam  of  the  sea 
is  just  such  an  object  as  a  savage  might  choose  to  put 
his  life  in,  because  it  occupies  that  sort  of  intermediate 
or  nondescript  position  between  earth  and  sky  or  sea 
and  sky  in  which  primitive  man  sees  safety.  It  is 
therefore  not  surprising  that  the  foam  of  the  river 
should  be  the  totem  of  a  clan  in  India.^  Again,  the 
view  that  the  mistletoe  owes  its  mystic  character  partly 
to  the  fact  of  its  not  growing  on  the  ground  is  confirmed 
by  a  parallel  superstition  about  the  mountain-ash  or 
rowan-tree.  In  Jutland  a  rowan  that  is  found  growing 
out  of  the  top  of  another  tree  is  esteemed  "  exceedingly 
effective  against  witchcraft :  since  it  does  not  grow  on 
the  ground  witches  have  no  power  over  it ;  if  it  is  to 
have  its  full  effect  it  must  be  cut  on  Ascension  Day."  ^ 
Hence  it  is  placed  over  doors  to  prevent  the  ingress  of 
witches.^     Similarly  the  mistletoe  in  Germany  is  still 

1  Grimm,  Deutsche  Mythologie,'^  ii.  over  Jyske  Ahimcsnial,  Fjerde  hefte 
looi,  loio.  (Copenhagen,    18S8),   p.    320.      For  a 

2  Folk-lore  Journal,  vii.  61.                  •  sight  of  Feilberg's  work  I  am  indebted 

3  Col.  E.  T.  Dalton,  "The  Kols  of  to  the  kindness  of  the  Rev.  Walter 
Chota-Nagpore,"  Tra7is.  Ethnol.  Soc.  Gregor,  M.A.,  Pitsligo,  who  pointed 
vi-  36-  out  the  passage  to  me. 

*  Jens    Kamp,  Daiiske  Folkeminder  5  g,    x.    Kristensen,    lydske   Folke- 

(Odense,  1877),  pp.  172, 65  ^(i^.  referred      mhider,    vi.     380262,    referred    to    by 
to  in   Feilberg's  Bidrag  til  en   Ordbog      Feilberg,  I.e. 


362  THE  MISTLETOE  IS  chap. 

universally  considered  a  protection  against  witchcraft, 
and  in  Sweden,  as  we  saw,  the  mistletoe  which  is 
gathered  on  Midsummer  Eve  Is  attached  to  the  ceiling 
of  the  house,  the  horse  stall,  or  the  cow's  crib,  in  the 
belief  that  this  renders  the  Troll  powerless  to  injure 
man  or  beast. ^ 

The  view  that  the  mistletoe  was  not  merely  the 
instrument  of  Balder's  death,  but  that  It  contained  his 
life,  is  countenanced  by  the  analogy  of  a  Scottish 
superstition.  Tradition  ran  that  the  fate  of  the  family 
of  Hay  was  bound  up  with  the  mistletoe  of  a  certain 
oak. 

"  While  the  mistletoe  bats  on  Errol's  oak, 
And  that  oak  stands  fast, 

The  Hays  shall  flourish,  and  their  good  gray  hawk 
Shall  not  flinch  before  the  blast. 

"  But  when  the  root  of  the  oak  decays. 
And  the  mistletoe  dwines  on  its  withered  breast, 
The  grass  shall  grow  on  the  Earl's  hearthstone, 
And  the  corbies  craw  in  the  falcon's  nest." 

"A  large  oak  with  the  mistletoe  growing  on  it  was 
long  pointed  out  as  the  tree  referred  to.  A  piece  of 
the  mistletoe  cut  by  a  Hay  was  believed  to  have 
magical  virtues.  '  The  oak  is  gone  and  the  estate  is 
lost  to  the  family,'  as  a  local  historian  says."^  The 
idea  that  the  fate  of  a  family,  as  distinct  from  the  lives 
of  its  members,  is  bound  up  with  a  particular  plant  or 
tree,  is  no  doubt  comparatively  modern.  The  older 
view  probably  was  that  the  lives  of  all  the  Hays  were 
In  this  particular  mistletoe,  just  as  In  the  Indian  story 
the  lives  of  all  the  ogres  are  In  a  lemon  ;  to  break  a 
twig  of  the  mistletoe  would  then  have  been  to  kill  one 

1  Wuttke,  Der  deiitsche  Volksaber-  and  sent  to  me  by  the  Rev.  Walter 
glaube^^%\2%;  I..  lAoyA,  Peasant  Life  Gregor,  M.A.,  Pitsligo.  Mr.  Gregor 
in  Sweden,  p.  269.  does    not    mention    the    name  of   the 

2  Extract  from  a  newspajDer,  copied  newspaper. 


IV  THE  GOLDEN  BOUGH  363 

of  the  Hays.  Similarly  in  the  island  of  Rum,  whose 
bold  mountains  the  voyager  from  Oban  to  Skye 
observes  to  seaward,  it  was  thought  that  if  one  of 
the  family  of  Lachlin  shot  a  deer  on  the  mountain  of 
Finchra,  he  would  die  suddenly  or  contract  a  dis- 
temper which  would  soon  prove  fatal. ^  Probably  the 
life  of  the  Lachlins  was  bound  up  with  the  deer  on 
Finchra,  as  the  life  of  the  Hays  was  bound  up  with 
the  mistletoe  on  Errol's  oak. 

It  is  not  a  new  opinion  that  the  Golden  Bough 
was  the  mistletoe."  True,  Virgil  does  not  identify  but 
only  compares  it  with  the  mistletoe.  But  this  may  be 
only  a  poetical  device  to  cast  a  mystic  glamour  over 
the  humble  plant.  Or,  more  probably,  his  description 
was  based  on  a  popular  superstition  that  at  certain 
times  the  mistletoe  blazed  out  into  a  supernatural  golden 
glory.  The  poet  tells  how  two  doves,  guiding  Aeneas 
to  the  gloomy  vale  in  whose  depth  grew  the  Golden 
Bough,  alighted  upon  a  tree,  "  whence  shone  a 
flickering  gleam  of  gold.  As  in  the  woods  in  winter 
cold  the  mistletoe — a  plant  not  native  to  its  tree — is 
green  with  fresh  leaves  and  twines  its  yellow  berries 
about  the  boles  ;  such  seemed  upon  the  shady  oak  the 
leafy  gold,  so  rustled  in  the  gentle  breeze  the  golden 
leaf."  ^  Here  Virgil  definitely  describes  the  Golden 
Bough  as  growing  on  an  oak,  and  compares  it  with  the 
mistletoe.  The  inference  is  almost  inevitable  that  the 
Golden  Bough  was  nothing  but  the  mistletoe  seen 
through  the  haze  of  poetry  or  of  popular  superstition. 

Now  grounds  have  been  shown  for  believing  that 

^  Martin,      "  Description      of     the  "  Rochholz,    Deutscher   Glaube   iind 

Western     Islands     of    Scotland,"     in      Bi-aiich,  i.  9. 

Pinkerton's    Voyages  and   Travels,   iii.  ^  Virgil,  Aen.  vi.  203  sqq.,  cp.  136 

661.  sqq.     On    the    mistletoe    (viscum)    see 

Pliny,  N'at.  Hist.  xvi.  245  sqq. 


364  THE  KING  OF  THE   WOOD  chap. 

the  priest  of  the  Arician  grove  —  the  King  of  the 
Wood — personified  the  tree  on  which  grew  the  Golden 
Bough. ^  Hence,  if  that  tree  was  the  oak,  the  King  of 
the  Wood  must  have  been  a  personification  of  the  oak- 
spirit.  It  is,  therefore,  easy  to  understand  why,  before 
he  could  be  slain,  it  was  necessary  to  break  the  Golden 
Bough.  As  an  oak-spirit,  his  life  or  death  was  in  the 
mistletoe  on  the  oak,  and  so  long  as  the  mistletoe  re- 
mained intact,  he,  like  Balder,  could  not  die.  To  slay 
him,  therefore,  it  was  necessary  to  break  the  mistletoe, 
and  probably,  as  in  the  case  of  Balder,  to  throw  it  at 
him.  And  to  complete  the  parallel,  it  is  only  necessary 
to  suppose  that  the  King  of  the  Wood  was  formerly 
burned,  dead  or  alive,  at  the  midsummer  fire  festival 
which,  as  we  have  seen,  was  annually  celebrated  in  the 
Arician  grove. ^  The  perpetual  fire  which  burned  in 
the  grove,  like  the  perpetual  fire  under  the  oak  at 
Romove,  was  probably  fed  with  the  sacred  oak-wood  ; 
and  thus  it  would  be  in  a  great  fire  of  oak  that  the  King 
of  the  Wood  formerly  met  his  end.  At  a  later  time, 
as  I  have  suggested,  his  annual  tenure  of  office  was 
lengthened  or  shortened,  as  the  case  might  be,  by  the 
rule  which  allowed  him  to  live  so  long  as  he  could 
prove  his  divine  right  by  the  strong  hand.  But  he 
only  escaped  the  fire  to  fall  by  the  sword. 

Thus  it  seems  that  at  a  remote  age  in  the  heart  of 
Italy,  beside  the  sweet  lake  of  Nemi,  the  same  fiery 
tragedy  was  annually  enacted  which  Italian  merchants 
and  soldiers  were  afterwards  to  witness  among  their 
rude  kindred,    the   Celts   of  Gaul,    and   which,    if   the 

^  Virgil   (Aen.   vi.    201   sqq.)   places  infernal  world.      Italian  tradition,  as  we 

the  Golden  Bough  in  the  neighbourhood  learn  from  Servius,  placed  the  Golden 

of  Lake  Avernus.      But  this  was  prob-  Bough  in  the  grove  at  Nemi. 
ably  a  poetical  liberty,  adopted  for  the 

convenience  of  Aeneas's  descent  to  the  ^  See  above,  vol.  i.  p.  4  sq. 


IV  BURNT  IN  OAK  FIRE  365 

Roman  eagles  had  ever  swooped  on  Norway,  might 
have  been  found  repeated  with  Httle  difference  among 
the  barbarous  Aryans  of  the  North.  The  rite  was 
probably  an  essential  feature  in  the  primitive  Aryan 
worship  of  the  oak,^ 

It  only  remains  to  ask,  Why  was  the  mistletoe 
called  the  Golden  Bough  ?  The  name  was  not  simply  a 
poet's  fancy,  nor  even  peculiarly  Italian  ;  for  in  Welsh 
also  the  mistletoe  is  known  as  "  the  tree  of  pure  gold."  ^ 
The  whitish-yellow  of  the  mistletoe  berries  is  hardly 
enough  to  account  for  the  name.  For  Virgil  says  that 
the  Bough  was  altogether  golden,  stem  as  well  as 
leaves,^  and  the  same  is  implied  in  the  Welsh  name, 
"  the  tree  of  pure  gold."  A  clue  to  the  real  meaning 
of  the  name  is  furnished  by  the  mythical  fern-seed  or 
fern-bloom. 

We  saw  that  fern -seed  is  popularly  supposed  to 
bloom  like  sfold  or  fire  on  Midsummer  Eve.  Thus 
in  Bohemia  it  is  said  that  "  on  St.  John's  Day  fern- 
seed  blooms  with  golden  blossoms  that  gleam  like 
fire."'*  Now  it  is  a  property  of  this  mythical  fern- 
seed  that  whoever  has  it,  or  will  ascend  a  mountain 
holding  it  in  his  hand  on  Midsummer  Eve,  will  discover 
a  vein  of  orold  or  will  see  the  treasures  of  the  earth 
shining  with  a  bluish  flame.^     And  if  you  place  fern- 

1  A  custom  of  annually  burning  a  Druids  seem  to  have  eaten  portions  of 

human  representative  of  the  corn-spirit  the  human  victim.      Pliny,  Nat.  Hist. 

has  been  noted  among  the   Egyptians,  xxx.  §13.     Perhaps  portions  of  the  flesh 

Pawnees,  and  Khonds.     See  above,  vol.  of  the  King  of  the  Wood  were  eaten  by 

i.  pp.  382,   387,   401    sq.      In    Semitic  his  worshippers   as   a  sacrament.      We 

lands  there  are  traces  of  a  practice  of  have  seen  traces  of  the  use  of  sacramental 

annually  burning  a  human  god.    For  the  bread  at  Nemi.      See  above,  p.  82  sq. 
image   of   Hercules    (that    is,   of  Baal)  "^  Grimm,    Deutsche  Alythologie,'^  ii. 

which  was  periodically  burned  on  a  pyre  1009,  pren  piiranr. 
at  Tarsus,  must  have  been  a  substitute  ^  Virgil,  Aen.  vi.   137  sq. 

for  a  human  representative  of  the  god.  *  Grohmann,   Aberglaitben   und  Ge- 

See  Dio  Chrysostom,   Orat.  33,  vol.  ii.  briiuche  aus  Bohmemi7id  Mdh>'en,%6'j'^. 
p.  16,  ed.  Dindorf;  "\V.  R.  Smith,  The  ^  Grohmann,  op.  at.  §676;  Wuttke, 

Religion  of  the  Se7niies,\.  353  J';/.      The  Der  deutsche  Volksaberglaiibe,  §  123. 


366  U'BV  THE  MISTLETOE  chap. 

seed  among  money,  the  money  will  never  decrease, 
however  much  of  it  you  spend.^  Sometimes  the 
fern -seed  is  supposed  to  bloom  at  Christmas,  and 
whoever  catches  it  will  become  very  rich.-  Thus,  on 
the  principle  of  like  by  like,  fern -seed  is  supposed  to 
discover  gold  because  it  is  itself  golden  ;  and  for  a 
similar  reason  it  enriches  its  possessor  with  an  un- 
failing supply  of  gold.  But  while  the  fern -seed  is 
described  as  golden,  it  is  equally  described  as  glowing 
and  fiery.^  Hence,  when  we  consider  that  two  great 
days  for  gathering  the  fabulous  seed  are  Midsummer 
Eve  and  Christmas — that  is,  the  two  solstices  (for 
Christmas  is  nothing  but  an  old  heathen  celebration  of 
the  winter  solstice) — we  are  led  to  regard  the  fiery 
aspect  of  the  fern  -  seed  as  primary,  and  its  golden 
aspect  as  secondary  and  derivative.  Fern  -  seed,  in 
fact,  would  seem  to  be  an  emanation  of  the  sun's  fire 
at  the  two  turning-points  of  its  course,  the  summer 
and  winter  solstices.  This  view  is  confirmed  by  a 
German  story  in  which  a  hunter  is  said  to  have 
procured  fern -seed  by  shooting  at  the  sun  on  Mid- 
summer Day  at  noon  ;  three  drops  of  blood  fell 
down,  which  he  caught  in  a  white  cloth,  and  these 
blood-drops  were  the  fern-seed.^  Here  the  blood 
is  clearly  the  blood  of  the  sun,  from  which  the  fern- 
seed  is  thus  directly  derived.  Thus  it  may  be 
taken  as  certain  that  fern -seed  is  golden,  because 
it  is  believed  to  be  an  emanation  of  the  sun's  golden 
fire. 

Now,    like    fern- seed,    the    mistletoe    is    gathered 

1  Zingerle,     Sitten,     Brdiic/ie     itnd      Ralston,  Songs  of  the  Russian  Fcople, 
Meimengen     des     Tirol er      Volkes^^    §      p.  98. 

882.  *  L.  Bechstein,  Deutsches  Sagenlmch 

2  Zingerle  op.  cit.  §  1573.  No.    500;    id.,  Thiiringer  Sagenlmch 

3  Grohmann,      op.      cit.      §      675  ;      (Leipzig,  1885),  ii.  No.  161. 


IV  WAS  CALLED  GOLDEN  367 

either  at  Midsummer  or  Christmas^ — that  is,  at  the 
summer  and  winter  solstices — and,  like  fern -seed,  it 
is  supposed  to  possess  the  power  of  revealing  treasures 
in  the  earth.  On  Midsummer  Eve  people  in  Sweden 
make  divining-rods  of  mistletoe  or  of  four  different 
kinds  of  wood,  one  of  which  must  be  mistletoe.  The 
treasure-seeker  places  the  rod  on  the  ground  after  sun- 
down, and  when  it  rests  directly  over  treasure,  the  rod 
begins  to  move  as  if  it  were  alive.-  Now,  if  the 
mistletoe  discovers  gold,  it  must  be  in  its  character 
of  the  Golden  Bough  ;  and  if  it  is  gathered  at  the  sol- 
stices, must  not  the  Golden  Bough,  like  the  golden  fern- 
seed,  be  an  emanation  of  the  sun's  fire  ?  The  question 
cannot  be  answered  with  a  simple  affirmative.  We 
have  seen  that  the  primitive  Aryans  probably  kindled 
the  midsummer  bonfires  as  sun -charms,  that  is,  with 
the  intention  of  supplying  the  sun  with  fresh  fire.  But 
as  this  fire  was  always  elicited  by  the  friction  of  oak 
wood,^  it  must  have  appeared  to  the  primitive  Aryan 
that  the  sun  was  periodically  recruited  from  the  fire 
which  resided  in  the  sacred  oak.  In  other  words,  the 
oak  must  have  seemed  to  him  the  original  storehouse 
or  reservoir  of  the  fire  which  was  from  time  to  time 
drawn  out  to  feed  the  sun.  But  the  life  of  the  oak 
was  conceived  to  be  in  the  mistletoe  ;  therefore  the 
mistletoe  must  have  contained  the  seed  or  germ  of  the 


1  For    gathering   it    at   midsummer,  Aledallic  History  of  Caraitsius,  quoted 

see    above,   p.    289.       Tlie    custom    of  by  Brand,  Popular  Antiquities,  i.   525. 

gathering  it  at  Christmas  still  survives  This    last    custom    is   of    course    now 

among  ourselves.     At  York  "on   the  obselete. 

eve    of     Christmas     Day     they    carry  9    .r    i- 

mistletoe    to    the    high    altar    of    the  /  ^f^ehus      Volkssagett    unci    Volks- 

cathedral,   and   proclaim  a  public  and  ^'f^^ aus  Schwedens  hlterer  nmi 7ieuerer 

universal  liberty,  pardon,  and  freedom  ff^    \   Al./^'l     Grimm,     Deutsche 

to  all  sorts  of  inferior  and  even  wicked  fyf^'^J'^S^e^  m.  289 ;  L.  Lloyd,  Feasant 

people  at  the  gates  of  the  city,  towards  ^'-^^  "'  ^'''''^'''^  P-  266  sq. 

the  four  quarters  of  heaven."     Stukeley,  ^  Above,  p.  293. 


368  THE  OAK  A  STORE 


fire  which  was  elicited  by  friction  from  the  wood  of  the 
oak.  Thus,  instead  of  saying  that  the  mistletoe  was 
an  emanation  of  the  sun's  fire,  it  would  be  more 
correct  to  say  that  the  sun's  fire  was  regarded  as  an 
emanation  of  the  mistletoe.  No  wonder,  then,  that 
the  mistletoe  shone  with  a  golden  splendour,  and  was 
called  the  Golden  Bough.  Probably,  however,  like 
fern-seed,  it  was  thought  to  assume  its  golden  aspect 
only  at  those  stated  times,  especially  midsummer, 
when  fire  was  drawn  from  the  oak  to  light  up  the 
sun.^  At  Pulverbatch,  in  Shropshire,  it  was  believed 
within  living  memory  that  the  oak-tree  blooms  on  Mid- 
summer Eve  and  the  blossom  withers  before  daylight." 
This  fleeting  bloom  of  the  oak,  if  I  am  right,  could 
originally  have  been  nothing  but  the  mistletoe  in  its 
character  of  the  Golden  Bough.  As  Shropshire 
borders  on  Wales,  the  superstition  may  be  Welsh  in 
its  immediate  origin,  though  probably  the  belief  is  a 
fragment  of  the  primitive  Aryan  creed.  In  some 
parts  of  Italy,  as  we  saw,^  peasants  still  go  out  on 
Midsummer  morning  to  search  the  oak-trees  for  the 
"  oil  of  St.  John,"  which,  like  the  mistletoe,  heals  all 
wounds,  and  is  doubtless  the  mistletoe  itself  in  its 
glorified  aspect.  Thus  it  is  easy  to  understand  how  a 
tide  like  the  Golden  Bough  or  the  "  tree  of  pure  gold," 
so  litde  descriptive  of  the  real  appearance  of  the  plant, 
should  have  held  its  ground  as  a  name  for  the  mistletoe 
in  Italy  and  Wales,  and  probably  in  other  parts  of  the 
Aryan  world.* 

1  Fern-seed  is  supposed  to  bloom  at  Folk-lo7-e,  p.  242.  ^  P.  288. 
Easter  as  well  as  at  midsummer  and  *  The  reason  why  Virgil  represents 
Ch.n%im?i%{Rz\s\.on,  Songs  of  the  Russian  Aeneas  as  taking  the  mistletoe  with 
People,  p.  98  sq. ) ;  and  Easter,  as  we  him  to  Hades  is  perhaps  that  the 
have  seen,  is  one  of  the  times  when  sun-  mistletoe  was  supposed  to  repel  evil 
fires  are  kindled.  spirits   (see    above,    p.    362).       Hence 

2  Burne    and    Jackson,     Shropshire  when  Charon  is  disposed  to  bluster  at 


OF  SOLAR  FIRE  369 


Now,  too,  we  can  fully  understand  why  Virbius 
came  to  be  confounded  with  the  sun.  If  Virbius  was, 
as  I  have  tried  to  show,  a  tree -spirit,  he  must  have 
been  the  spirit  of  the  oak  on  which  grew  the  Golden 
Bough  ;  for  tradition  represented  him  as  the  first  of 
the  Kings  of  the  Wood.  As  an  oak-spirit  he  must 
have  been  supposed  periodically  to  rekindle  the  sun's 
fire,  and  might  therefore  easily  be  confounded  with 
the  sun  itself.  Similarly  we  can  explain  why  Balder, 
an  oak -spirit,  was  described  as  "so  fair  of  face  and  so 
shining  that  alight  went  forth  from  him,"  ^  and  why  he 
should  have  been  so  often  taken  to  be  the  sun.  And 
in  general  we  may  say  that  in  primitive  society,  when 
the  only  known  way  of  making  fire  is  by  the  friction  of 
wood,  the  savage  must  necessarily  conceive  fire  as  a 
property  stored  away,  like  sap  or  juice,  in  trees,  from 
which  he  has  laboriously  to  extract  it.  Thus  all  trees, 
or  at  least  the  particular  sorts  of  trees  whose  wood  he 
employs  in  fire -making,  must  be  regarded  by  him  as 
reservoirs  of  hidden  fire,  and  it  is  natural  that  he 
should  describe  them  by  epithets  like  golden,  shining,  or 
bright.  May  not  this  have  been  the  origin  of  the  name, 
"  the  Bright  or  Shining  One  "  (Zeus,  Jove)  by  which  the 
ancient  Greeks  and  Italians  designated  their  supreme 
god?^     It  is  at  least  highly  significant  that,  amongst 

Aeneas,  the  sight  of  the  Golden  Bough  "shming,"     "bright,"     see     Curtius, 

quiets  him  [Aen.  vi.  406  j^.)      Perhaps  Griech.  Etymologie,^  ^.  236;  Vanicek, 

also  the  power  ascribed  to  the  mistletoe  Griech. -Latein.  Etymolog.   IVorterbuch, 

of  laying  bare  the  secrets  of  the  earth  p.  353  sqq.     On  the  relation   of  Jove 

may  have  suggested  its  use  as  a  kind  of  to  the  oak,  compare  Pliny,  Nat.  Hist. 

"open   Sesame"   to   the   lower  world.  xii.    §    3,    arboriim  genera   niuninibus 

Compare  Aen.  vi.   140  sq. —  siiis  dicata  perpetuo  servantiir,  ut  Jovi 

"  Sed  nonantedaturtelliirisopertasubire,  aesculus  ;  Servius  on  Virgil,  Georg.  iii. 

Auricomos^qua^n   qui  decerpserit   arbore  332,  omnis  qiierais  Jovi  est  consecrata. 

fetus.  2ieus  and  Jupiter  have  commonly  been 

^'^  8  ^'^'^'^'     ubersetzt     von     K.  regarded    as    sky    gods,    because    their 

Simrock,    p.  264.  names    are    etymologically    connected 

On  the   derivation   of  the    names  with  the  Sanscrit  word  for  sky.     The 

Zeus  and  Jove  from   a  root   meaning  reason  seems  insufficient. 

VOL.   II  2  B 


370  THE  OAK  THE  CHIEE  GOD  chap. 

both  Greeks  and  Italians,  the  oak  should  have  been 
the  tree  of  the  supreme  god,  that  at  his  most  ancient 
shrines,  both  in  Greece  and  Italy,  this  supreme  god 
should  have  been  actually  represented  by  an  oak,  and 
that  so  soon  as  the  barbarous  Aryans  of  Northern 
Europe  appear  in  the  light  of  history,  they  should  be 
found,  amid  all  diversities  of  language,  of  character, 
and  of  country,  nevertheless  at  one  in  worshipping  the 
oak  as  the  chief  object  of  their  religious  reverence,  and 
extracting  their  sacred  fire  from  its  wood.  If  we  are 
to  judge  of  the  primitive  religion  of  the  European 
Aryans  by  comparing  the  religions  of  the  different 
branches  of  the  stock,  the  highest  place  in  their 
pantheon  must  certainly  be  assigned  to  the  oak.  The 
result,  then,  of  our  inquiry  is  to  make  it  probable  that, 
down  to  the  time  of  the  Roman  Empire  and  the  be- 
ginning of  our  era,  the  primitive  worship  of  the 
Aryans  was  maintained  nearly  in  its  original  form 
in  the  sacred  grove  at  Nemi,  as  in  the  oak  woods 
of  Gaul,  of  Prussia,  and  of  Scandinavia ;  and  that 
the  King  of  the  Wood  lived  and  died  as  'an  incar- 
nation of  the  supreme  Aryan  god,  whose  life  was  in 
the  mistletoe  or  Golden  Boug^h. 


If,  in  bidding  farewell  to  Nemi,  we  look  around  us 
for  the  last  time,  we  shall  find  the  lake  and  its  sur- 
roundings not  much  changed  from  what  they  were 
in  the  days  when  Diana  and  Virbius  still  received 
the  homage  of  their  worshippers  in  the  sacred'  grove. 
The  temple  of  Diana,  indeed,  has  disappeared,  and  the 
King  of  the  Wood  no  longer  stands  sentinel  over  the 


IV  LE  ROI  EST  MORT  2>n 

Golden  Bough.  But  Nemi's  woods  are  still  green, 
and  at  evening  you  may  hear  the  church  bells  of 
Albano,  and  perhaps,  if  the  air  be  still,  of  Rome  itself, 
ringing  the  Angelus.  Sweet  and  solemn  they  chime 
out  from  the  distant  city,  and  die  lingeringly  away 
across  the  wide  Campagnan  marshes.  Le  roi  est  mort, 
Vive  le  roi  ! 


NOTE 

Oferings  of  first-fruits 

We  have  seen  (vol.  ii.  p.  68  sqq>i  that  primitive  peoples  often  partake 
of  the  new  corn  sacramentally,  because  they  suppose  it  to  be  instinct 
with  a  divine  spirit  or  life.  At  a  later  age,  when  the  fruits  of  the  earth 
are  conceived  as  produced  rather  than  as  animated  by  a  divinity,  the 
new  fruits  are  no  longer  partaken  of  sacramentally  as  the  body  and 
blood  of  a  god  ;  but  a  portion  of  them  is  presented  as  a  thank- 
offering  to  the  divine  beings  who  are  believed  to  have  produced 
them.  Sometimes  the  first-fruits  are  presented  to  the  king,  probably 
in  his  character  of  a  god.  Till  the  first-fruits  have  been  offered  to 
the  deity  or  the  king,  people  are  not  at  liberty  to  eat  of  the  new 
crops.  But,  as  it  is  not  always  possible  to  draw  a  sharp  line  between 
the  sacrament  and  the  sacrifice  of  first-fiuits,  it  may  be  well  to  round 
off  this  part  of  the  subject  by  appending  some  miscellaneous  examples 
of  the  latter. 

Among  the  Basutos,  when  the  corn  has  been  threshed  and 
winnowed,  it  is  left  in  a  heap  on  the  threshing-floor.  Before  it 
can  be  touched  a  religious  ceremony  must  be  performed.  The 
persons  to  whom  the  corn  belongs  bring  a  new  vessel  to  the  spot,  in 
which  they  boil  some  of  the  grain.  When  it  is  boiled  they  throw  a 
few  handfuls  of  it  on  the  heap  of  corn,  saying,  "  Thank  you,  gods ; 
give  us  bread  to-morrow  also!"  When  this  is  done  the  rest  is 
eaten,  and  the  provision  for  the  year  is  considered  pure  and  fit  to 
eat.^  Here  the  sacrifice  of  the  first-fruits  to  the  gods  is  the  prominent 
idea,  which  comes  out  again  in  the  custom  of  leaving  in  the  threshing- 
floor  a  little  hollow  filled  with  grain,  as  a  thank-off'ering  to  the  gods.^ 

1  Casalis,  The  Basutos,  p.  251  sq.  2  73.  p.  252. 


374  OFFERINGS  OF  FIRST-FRUITS 


Still  the  Basutos  retain  a  lively  sense  of  the  saijctity  of  the  corn  in 
itself;  for,  so  long  as  it  is  exposed  to  view,  all  defiled  persons  are 
carefully  kept  from  it.  If  it  is  necessary  to  employ  a  defiled  person 
in  carrying  home  the  harvest,  he  remains  at  some  distance  while  the 
sacks  are  being  filled,  and  only  approaches  to  place  them  upon  the 
draught  oxen.  As  soon  as  the  load  is  deposited  at  the  dwelling  he 
retires,  and  under  no  pretext  may  he  help  to  pour  the  corn  into  the 
baskets  in  which  it  is  kept.^ 

In  Ashantee  a  harvest  festival  is  held  in  September  when  the 
yams  are  ripe.  During  the  festival  the  king  eats  the  new  yams,  but 
none  of  the  people  may  eat  them  till  the  close  of  the  festival,  which 
lasts  a  fortnight.  During  its  continuance  the  grossest  liberty  prevails  ; 
theft,  intrigue,  and  assault  go  unpunished,  and  each  sex  abandons 
itself  to  its  passions.^  The  Hovas  of  Madagascar  present  the  first 
sheaves  of  the  new  grain  to  the  sovereign.  The  sheaves  are  carried 
in  procession  to  the  palace  from  time  to  time  as  the  grain  ripens.^ 
So  in  Burma,  when  i\\epa?igati  fruits  ripen,  some  of  them  used  to  be 
taken  to  the  king's  palace  that  he  might  eat  of  them  ;  no  one  might 
partake  of  them  before  the  king."* 

Every  year,  when  they  gather  their  first  crops,  the  Kochs  of 
Assam  offer  some  of  the  first-fruits  to  their  ancestors,  calling  to  them 
by  name  and  clapping  their  hands. ^  In  August,  when  the  rice 
ripens,  the  Hos  offer  the  first-fruits  of  the  harvest  to  Sing  Bonga, 
who  dwells  in  the  sun.  Along  with  the  new  rice  a  white  cock  is 
sacrificed ;  and  till  the  sacrifice  has  been  offered  no  one  may  eat  the 
new  rice.^  Among  the  hill  tribes  near  Rajamahall,  in  India,  when 
the  kosarane  grain  is  being  reaped  in  November  or  early  in 
December,  a  festival  is  held  as  a  thanksgiving  before  the  new  grain 
is  eaten.  On  a  day  appointed  by  the  chief  a  goat  is  sacrificed  by 
two  men  to  a  god  called  Chitariah  Gossaih,  after  which  the  chief 
himself  sacrifices  a  fowl.  Then  the  vassals  repair  to  their  fields, 
offer  thanksgiving,  make  an  oblation  to  Kull  Gossaih  (who  is 
described  as  the  Ceres  of  these  mountaineers),  and  then  return 
to    their   houses    to   eat   of   the   new   kosarane.      As  soon  as  the 

1  Casalis,  The  Basjitos,  ^.  252^^7.  narivo  Animal  and  Madagascar  Maga- 

-  A.    B.    Ellis,    The    Tshi- speaking  zine,  iii.  263. 

Peoples  of  the  Gold  Coast,  p.  229  sq.;  ■*  Bastian,   Die    Vblker  des  dstlichen 

T.    E.   Bowdich,  Mission  to  Ashantee,  Asien,  ii.  105. 

p.  226^-7.  (ed.  1873.)  5  Dalton,   Ethnology  of  Bengal,    p. 

3  J.   Cameron,    "On  the  Early  In-  91. 

habitants    of    Madagascar,"    Antana-  "  Dalton,  op.  cit.  p.  19S. 


NOTE  OFFERINGS  OF  FIRST-FRUITS  375 

inhabitants  have  assembled  at  the  chiefs  house — the  men  sitting 
on  one  side  and  the  women  on  the  other — a  hog,  a  measure  of 
kosarane,  and  a  pot  of  spirits  are  presented  to  the  chief,  who  in 
return  blesses  his  vassals,  and  exhorts  them  to  industry  and  good 
behaviour ;  "  after  which,  making  a  libation  in  the  names  of  all  their 
gods,  and  of  their  dead,  he  drinks,  and  also  throws  a  little  of  the 
kosara7ie  away,  repeating  the  same  pious  exclamations."  Drinking 
and  festivity  then  begin,  and  are  kept  up  for  several  days.  The 
same  tribes  have  another  festival  at  reaping  the  Indian  corn  in 
August  or  September.  Every  man  repairs  to  his  fields  with  a  hog, 
a  goat,  or  a  fowl,  which  he  sacrifices  to  KuU  Gossaih.  Then, 
having  feasted,  he  returns  home,  where  another  repast  is  prepared. 
On  this  day  it  is  customary  for  every  family  in  the  village  to 
distribute  to  every  house  a  little  of  what  they  have  prepared  for 
their  feast.  Should  any  person  eat  of  the  new  kosarane  or  the  new 
Indian  corn  before  the  festival  and  public  thanksgiving  at  the 
reaping  of  these  crops,  the  chief  fines  him  a  white  cock,  which  is 
sacrificed  to  Chitariah.^  In  the  Central  Provinces  of  India  the  first 
grain  of  the  season  is  always  offered  to  the  god  Bhimsen  or  Bhim 
Deo.^  In  the  Punjaub,  when  sugar-cane  is  planted,  a  woman  puts  on 
a  necklace  and  walks  round  the  field,  winding  thread  on  to  a  spindle ;'' 
and  when  the  sugar-cane  is  cut  the  first-fruits  are  offered  on  an  altar, 
which  is  built  close  to  the  press  and  is  sacred  to  the  sugar-cane  god. 
Afterwards  the  first-fruits  are  given  to  Brahmans.  Also,  when  the 
women  begin  to  pick  the  cotton,  they  go  round  the  field  eating  rice- 
milk,  the  first  mouthful  of  which  they  spit  upon  the  field  toward  the 
west ;  and  the  first  cotton  picked  is  exchanged  at  the  village  shop  for 
its  weight  in  salt,  which  is  prayed  over  and  kept  in  the  house  till 
the  picking  is  finished.* 

In  the  island  of  Tjumba,  East  Indies,  a  festival  is  held  after 
harvest.  Vessels  filled  with  rice  are  presented  as  a  thank-offering  to 
the  gods.  Then  the  sacred  stone  at  the  foot  of  a  palm-tree  is 
sprinkled  with  the  blood  of  a  sacrificed  animal ;  and  rice,  with  some  of 

1  Thomas  Shaw,  "The  Inhabitants  women  were  forbidden  by  law  to  walk 
of  the  Hills  near  Rajamahall,"  Asiatic  on  the  highroads  twirling  a  spindle, 
Researches,  iv.  56  sq.  because    this    was    supposed    to    injure 

2  Punjab  Notes  and  Queries,  i.  No.  the  crops.      Pliny,    Nat.    Hist,    xxviii. 

^     ■  *  D.    C.    J.    Ibbetson,    Oiitli7ies    of 

3  This  is  curiously  unlike  the  custom  Panjab  Ethnography  (Calcutta,  1S83), 
of  ancient  Italy,  in  most  parts  of  which      p.  119. 


376  OFFERINGS  OF  FIRST-FRUITS  note 

the  flesh,  is  laid  on  the  stone  for  the  gods.  The  palm-tree  is  hung  with 
lances  and  shields.^  The  Dyaks  of  Borneo  hold  a  feast  of  first-fruits 
when  the  paddy  (unhusked  rice)  is  ripe.  The  priestesses,  accom- 
panied by  a  gong  and  drum,  go  in  procession  to  the  farms  and 
gather  several  bunches  of  the  ripe  paddy.  These  are  brought  back 
to  the  village,  washed  in  cocoa-nut  water,  and  laid  round  a  bamboo 
altar,  which  at  the  harvest  festivals  is  erected  in  the  common  room  of 
the  largest  house.  The  altar  is  gaily  decorated  with  white  and  red 
streamers,  and  is  hung  with  the  sweet- smelling  blossom  of  the  areca 
palm.  The  feast  lasts  two  days,  during  which  the  village  is  tabooed ; 
no  one  may  leave  it.  Only  fowls  are  killed,  and  dancing  and  gong- 
beating  go  on  day  and  night.  When  the  festival  is  over  the  people 
are  free  to  get  in  their  crops.^ 

The  pounding  of  the  new  paddy  is  the  occasion  of  a  harvest 
festival  which  is  celebrated  all  over  Celebes.  The  religious  cere- 
monies which  accompany  the  feast  were  witnessed  by  Dr.  B.  F. 
Matthes  in  July  1857.  Two  mats  were  spread  on  the  ground,  each 
with  a  pillow  on  it.  On  one  of  the  pillows  were  placed  a  man's 
clothes  and  a  sword,  on  the  other  a  woman's  clothes.  These  were 
seemingly  intended  to  represent  the  deceased  ancestors.  Rice  and 
water  were  placed  before  the  two  dummy  figures,  and  they  were 
sprinkled  with  the  new  paddy.  Also  dishes  of  rice  were  set  down 
for  the  rest  of  the  family  and  the  slaves  of  the  deceased.  This  was 
the  end  of  the  ceremony.^  The  Minahassa  of  Celebes  have  a 
festival  of  "eating  the  new  rice."  Fowls  or  pigs  are  killed;  some  of 
the  flesh,  with  rice  and  palm-wine,  is  set  apart  for  the  gods,  and  then 
the  eating  and  drinking  begin.^  The  people  of  Kobi  and  Sariputi, 
two  villages  on  the  north-east  coast  of  Ceram,  offer  the  first-fruits  of 
the  paddy,  in  the  form  of  cooked  rice,  with  tobacco,  etc.,  to  their 
ancestors,  as  a  token  of  gratitude.  The  ceremony  is  called  "feeding 
the  dead."^     In  the  Tenimber  and  Timorlaut  Islands,  East  Indies, 

1  Fr.    Junghuhn,    Die    Battaldiider      165  j^.;  E.  Tregear,   "The  Maoris  of 
atif  Sumatra,  ii.  312.  New  Zealand,"  _/??«'«.  Anthrop.  Inst. 

2  Spenser    St.    John,    Life    in    the      xix.  no. 

Forests  of  the  Far  East,  i.    191.      On  ^  B.    F.    Matthes,   Beknopt    Verslag 

taboos  observed  at  agricultural  opera-  inijner  reizen  i)i  de  Binnenlanden  van 

tions,  see  id.   i.    185;    R.    G.    Wood-  Celebes,  in  de  jaren  1857  en   1861,  p. 

ihorpe,    "Wild  Tribes  Inhabiting  the  5. 

so-called  Naga  Hills, "y(3«;-«.  ^;2///;-<?/.  *  N.    Graafland,    De  Minahassa,    i. 

Inst.  xi.  71  ;   Old  N'ew  Zealand,  by  a  165. 

Pakeha  Maori  (London,  18S4),  p.  103  ^  J.    G.    F.    Riedel,     De    slnik-en 

sq. ;  R.  Taylor,    Te   Ika   a  RIaui ;  or,  kroesharige   rassen  tusschen  Selebes  en 

New  Zealand  and  its  Inhabitants,'^  p.  Papua,  p.   107. 


NOTE  OFFERINGS  OF  FIRST-FRUITS  2>77 

the  first-fruits  of  the  paddy,  along  with  live  fowls  and  pigs,  are  offered 
to  the  matmate.  The  viatmate  are  the  spirits  of  their  ancestors, 
which  are  worshipped  as  guardian-spirits  or  household  gods.  They 
are  supposed  to  enter  the  house  through  an  opening  in  the  roof,  and 
to  take  up  their  abode  temporarily  in  their  skulls,  or  in  images  of 
wood  or  ivory,  in  order  to  partake  of  the  offerings  and  to  help  the 
family.  They  also  take  the  form  of  birds,  pigs,  crocodiles,  turtles, 
sharks,  etc.^  In  Amboina,  after  the  rice  or  other  harvest  has  been 
gathered  in,  some  of  the  new  fruits  are  offered  to  the  gods,  and  till 
this  is  done,  the  priests  may  not  eat  of  them.  A  portion  of  the  new 
rice,  or  whatever  it  may  be,  is  boiled,  and  milk  of  the  cocoa-nut  is 
poured  on  it,  mixed  with  Indian  saffron.  It  is  then  taken  to  the 
place  of  sacrifice  and  offered  to  the  god.  Some  people  also  pour  out 
oil  before  the  deity ;  and  if  any  of  the  oil  is  left  over,  they  take  it 
home  as  a  holy  and  priceless  treasure,  wherewith  they  smear  the 
forehead  and  breast  of  sick  people  and  whole  people,  in  the  firm 
conviction  that  the  oil  confers  all  kinds  of  blessings.^  The  Irayas 
and  Catalangans  of  Luzon,  tribes  of  the  Malay  stock,  but  of  mixed 
blood,  worship  chiefly  the  souls  of  their  ancestors  under  the  name  of 
anitos,  to  whom  they  offer  the  first-fruits  of  the  harvest.  The  a?iitos 
are  household  deities ;  some  of  them  reside  in  pots  in  the  corners  of 
the  houses ;  and  miniature  houses,  standing  near  the  dwelling-house, 
are  especially  sacred  to  them.^ 

In  certain  tribes  of  Fiji  "the  first-fruits  of  the  yam  harvest  are 
presented  to  the  ancestors  in  the  Nanga  [sacred  stone  enclosure]  with 
great  ceremony,  before  the  bulk  of  the  crop  is  dug  for  the  people's 
use,  and  no  man  may  taste  of  the  new  yams  until  the  presentation 
has  been  made.  The  yams  thus  offered  are  piled  in  the  Great 
Nanga,  and  are  allowed  to  rot  there.  If  any  one  were  impiously 
bold  enough  to  appropriate  them  to  his  own  use,  he  would  be 
smitten  with  madness.  The  mission  teacher  before  mentioned  told 
me  that  when  he  visited  the  Nanga  he  saw  among  the  weeds  with 
which  it  was  overgrown  numerous  yam  vines  which  had  sprung  up 
out  of  the  piles  of  decayed  offerings.  Great  feasts  are  made  at  the 
presentations  of  the  first-fruits,  which  are  times  of  public  rejoicing, 
and  the  Nanga  itself  is  frequently  spoken  of  as  the  Mbaki,  or  Har- 


^  Riedel,  op.  cit.  pp.  281,  296  sq.  3  c_   Semper,  Die  PJiilippinejt  iind 

2  Fr.  Valentyn,  Omi  en  nieuw  Oost-      Hire  Bewohner,  p.  56. 
Indien.  iii.  10. 


378  OFFERINGS  OF  FIRST-FRUITS  note 

vest."  ^  In  other  parts  of  Fiji  the  practice  with  regard  to  the  first- 
fruits  seems  to  have  been  different,  for  we  are  told  by  another 
observer  that  "  the  first-fruits  of  the  yams,  which  are  always  pre- 
sented at  the  principal  temple  of  the  district,  become  the  property 
of  the  priests,  and  form  their  revenue,  although  the  pretence  of  their 
being  required  for  the  use  of  the  god  is  generally  kept  up."-  In 
Tana,  one  of  the  New  Hebrides,  the  general  name  for  gods  appeared 
to  be  areniha,  which  meant  "a  dead  man."  The  spirits  of  departed 
ancestors  were  among  the  gods  of  the  people.  Chiefs  who  reached 
an  advanced  age  were  deified  after  their  death,  addressed  by  name, 
and  prayed  to  on  various  occasions.  They  were  supposed  to  pre- 
side especially  over  the  growth  of  the  yams  and  fruit-trees.  The 
first-fruits  were  presented  to  them.  A  little  of  the  new  fruit  was  laid 
on  a  stone,  or  on  a  shelving  branch  of  the  tree,  or  on  a  rude  tem- 
porary altar,  made  of  a  few  sticks  lashed  together  with  strips  of  bark, 
in  the  form  of  a  table,  with  its  four  feet  stuck  in  the  ground.  All 
being  quiet,  the  chief  acted  as  high  priest,  and  prayed  aloud  as 
follows  :  "  Compassionate  father  !  here  is  some  food  for  you  ;  eat  it ; 
be  kind  to  us  on  account  of  it."  Then  all  the  people  shouted.  This 
took  place  about  noon,  and  afterwards  the  assembled  people  feasted 
and  danced  till  midnight  or  morning.^ 

In  some  of  the  Kingsmill  Islands  the  god  most  commonly  wor- 
shipped was  called  Tubueriki.  He  was  represented  by  a  flat  coral 
stone,  of  irregular  shape,  about  three  feet  long  by  eighteen  inches 
wide,  set  up  on  one  end  in  the  open  air.  Leaves  of  the  cocoa-nut 
palm  were  tied  about  it,  considerably  increasing  its  size  and  height. 
The  leaves  were  changed  every  month,  that  they  might  be  always 
fresh.  The  worship  paid  to  the  god  consisted  in  repeating  prayers 
before  the  stone,  and  laying  beside  it  a  portion  of  the  food  prepared 
by  the  people  for  their  own  use.  This  they  did  at  their  daily  meals, 
at  festivals,  and  whenever  they  specially  wished  to  propitiate  the 
favour  of  the  god.  The  first-fruits  of  the  season  were  always  offered 
to  him.  Every  family  of  distinction  had  one  of  these  stones 
which  was  considered  rather  in  the  light  of  a  family  altar  than  as  an 
idol.* 


1  Rev.  Lorimer  Fison,  "TheNanga,  a7nong  the  Islands  of  the  Western  Pacific, 

or  sacred  stone  enclosure,  of  Waini-  p.  252.  ^  Turner,  Satnoa,  p.  318  sq. 
mala,  ¥i]\,''^  Journ.  Anthrop.  Inst.  xiv.  ■*  Horatio   Hale,   United  States  Ex- 

27.  ploring     Expedition,    Ethnology     and 

-  J.  E.  'Exs\dr\Q,  Joitrtial  of  a  Cruise  Philology,  p.  97. 


NOTE  OFFERINGS  OF  FIRS  T-FR  UITS  379 

The  following  is  a  description  of  the  festival  of  first-fruits  as  it 
was  celebrated  in  Tonga  in  the  days  when  a  European  flag  rarely 
floated  among  the  islands  of  the  Pacific.  "  Inachi.  This  word  means 
literally  a  share  or  portion  of  any  thing  that  is  to  be,  or  has  been, 
distributed  out :  but  in  the  sense  here  mentioned  it  means  that  por- 
tion of  the  fruits  of  the  earth,  and  other  eatables,  which  is  offered  to 
the  gods  in  the  person  of  the  divine  chief  Tooitonga,  which  allotment 
is  made  once  a  year,  just  before  the  yams  in  general  are  arrived  at  a 
state  of  maturity ;  those  which  are  used  in  this  ceremony  being 
planted  sooner  than  others,  and,  consequently,  they  are  the  first-fruits 
of  the  yam  season.  The  object  of  this  offering  is  to  insure  the  pro- 
tection of  the  gods,  that  their  favour  may  be  extended  to  the  welfare 
of  the  nation  generally,  and  in  particular  to  the  productions  of  the 
earth,  of  which  yams  are  the  most  important. 

"  The  time  for  planting  most  kinds  of  yams  is  about  the  latter  end 
of  July,  but  the  species  called  caho-caho,  which  is  always  used  in  this 
ceremony,  is  put  in  the  ground  about  a  month  before,  when,  on  each 
plantation,  there  is  a  small  piece  of  land  chosen  and  fenced  in,  for 
the  purpose  of  growing  a  couple  of  yams  of  the  above  description. 
As  soon  as  they  have  arrived  at  a  state  of  maturity,  the  Hoio  [King] 
sends  a  messenger  to  Tooitonga,  stating  that  the  yams  for  the  Inachi 
are  fit  to  be  taken  up,  and  requesting  that  he  would  appoint  a  day 
for  the  ceremony;  he  generally  fixes  on  the  tenth  day  afterwards, 
reckoning  the  following  day  for  the  first.  There  are  no  particular 
preparations  made  till  the  day  before  the  ceremony ;  at  night,  how- 
ever, the  sound  of  the  conch  is  heard  occasionally  in  different  parts 
of  the  islands,  and  as  the  day  of  the  ceremony  approaches,  it  becomes 
more  frequent,  so  that  the  people  of  almost  every  plantation  sound 
the  conch  three  or  four  times,  which,  breaking  in  upon  the  silence  of 
the  night,  has  a  pleasing  effect,  particularly  at  Vavaoo,  where  the 
number  of  woods  and  hills  send  back  repeated  echoes,  adding  greatly 
to  the  effect.  The  day  before  the  ceremony  the  yams  are  dug  up, 
and  ornamented  with  a  kind  of  ribbon  prepared  from  the  inner 
membrane  of  the  leaf  of  a  species  of  pandanus,  and  dyed  red.  .  .  . 

"The  sun  has  scarcely  set  when  the  sound  of  the  conch  begins 
again  to  echo  through  the  island,  increasing  as  the  night  advances. 
At  the  Mooa  [capital]  and  all  the  plantations  the  voices  of  men  and 
women  are  heard  singing  Nofo  boa  tegger  gnaooe,  booa  gnaobe,  Rest 
thou,  doing  no  work ;  thou  shalt  not  work.  This  increases  till  mid- 
night, men  generally  singing  the  first  part  of  the  sentence,  and  the 


38o  OFFERINGS  OF  FIRST-FRUITS 


women  the  last :  it  then  subsides  for  three  or  four  hours,  and  again 
increases  as  the  sun  rises.     Nobody,  however,  is  seen  stirring  out  in 
the  pubhc  roads  till  about  eight  o'clock,  when  the  people  from  all 
quarters  of  the  island  are  seen  advancing  towards  the  Mooa,  and 
canoes  from  all  the  other  islands  are  landing  their  men  ;  so  that  all 
the  inhabitants  of  Tonga  seem  approaching  by  sea  and  land,  singing 
and  sounding  the  conch.     At  the  Mooa  itself  the  universal  bustle  of 
preparation  is  seen  and  heard ;  and  the  different  processions  entering 
from  various  quarters  of  men  and  women,  all  dressed  up  in  new 
gnatoos,  ornamented  with  red  ribbons  and  wreaths  of  flowers,  and  the 
men  armed  with  spears  and  clubs,  betoken  the  importance  of  the 
ceremony  about  to  be  performed.     Each  party  brings  in  its  yams  in 
a  basket,  which  is  carried  in  the  arms  with  great  care  by  the  principal 
vassal  of  the  chief  to  whom  the  plantation  may  belong.     The  baskets 
are  deposited  in  the  maldi^  (in  the  Mooa),  and  some  of  them  begin 
to  employ  themselves  in  slinging  the  yams,  each  upon  the  centre  of  a 
pole  about  eight  or  nine  feet  long,  and  four  inches  diameter.     The 
proceedings  are  regulated  by  attending  matabooles.^    The  yams  being 
all  slung,  each  pole  is  carried  by  two  men  upon  their  shoulders,  one 
walking  before  the  other,  and  the  yam  hanging  between  them,  orna- 
mented with  red  ribbons.     The  procession  begins  to  move  towards 
the  grave  of  the  last  Tooitonga  (which  is  generally  in  the  neighbour- 
hood, or  the  grave  of  one  of  his  family  will  do),  the  men  advancing 
in  a  single  line,  every  two  bearing  a  yam,  with  a  slow  and  measured 
pace,  sinking  at  every  step,   as  if  their  burden  were  of  immense 
weight.     In  the  meantime  the  chiefs  and  matabooles  are  seated  in  a 
semicircle  before  the  grave,  with  their  heads  bowed  down,  and  their 
hands  clasped  before  them."     The  procession  then  marched  round 
the  grave  twice  or  thrice  in  a  great  circle,  the  conchs  blowing  and 
the  men  singing.     Next  the  yams,  still  suspended  from  the  poles, 
were  deposited  before  the  grave,  and  their  bearers  sat  down  beside 
them.     One  of  the  matabooles  of  Tooitonga  now  addressed  the  gods 
generally,  and  afterwards  particularly,  mentioning  the  late  Tooitonga, 
and  the  names  of  several  others.     He  thanked  them  for  their  divine 
bounty  in  favouring  the  land  with  the  prospect  of  so  good  a  harvest, 
and  prayed  that  their  beneficence  might  be  continued  in  future. 

1  The  maldi  is  "a  piece  of  ground,      are  principally  held."     Mariner,  Tonga 
generally    before    a    large    house,    or      Islands,   Vocabulary. 
chief's  grave,  where  public  ceremonies  -  The    matahoole   is   "a    rank    next 

below  chiefs  or  nobles."     lb. 


OFFERINGS  OF  FIRST-FRUITS  381 


When  he  had  finished,  the  men  rose  and  resumed  their  loads,  and 
after  parading  two  or  three  times  round  the  grave,  marched  back  to 
the  maldi,  singing  and  blowing  the  conchs  as  before.  The  chiefs 
and  matabooks  soon  followed  to  the  same  place,  where  the  yams  had 
been  again  deposited.  Here  the  company  sat  down  in  a  great  circle, 
presided  over  by  Tooitonga.  Then  the  other  articles  that  formed 
part  of  the  Inachi  were  brought  forward,  consisting  of  dried  fish, 
mats,  etc.,  which,  with  the  yams,  were  divided  into  shares.  About  a 
fourth  was  allotted  to  the  gods,  and  appropriated  by  the  priests; 
about  a  half  fell  to  the  king;  and  the  remainder  belonged  to 
Tooitonga.  The  materials  of  the  Itiachi  having  been  carried  away, 
the  company  set  themselves  to  drink  cava^  and  a  mataboole  addressed 
them,  saying  that  the  gods  would  protect  them,  and  grant  them  long 
lives,  if  they  continued  to  observe  the  religious  ceremonies  and 
to  pay  respect  to  the  chiefs.^ 

The  Samoans  used  to  present  the  first-fruits  to  the  spirits  {aiUis) 
and  chiefs.^  For  example,  a  family  whose  god  was  in  the  form  of  an 
eel  presented  the  first-fruits  of  their  taro  plantations  to  the  eel.^  In 
Tahiti  "  the  first  fish  taken  periodically  on  their  shores,  together 
with  a  number  of  kinds  regarded  as  sacred,  were  conveyed  to  the 
altar.  The  first-fruits  of  their  orchards  and  gardens  were  also 
taumaha,  or  offered,  with  a  portion  of  their  live  stock,  which  con- 
sisted of  pigs,  dogs,  and  fowls,  as  it  was  supposed  death  would  be 
inflicted  on  the  owner  or  the  occupant  of  the  land  from  which  the  god 
should  not  receive  such  acknowledgment."  ^  In  Huahine,  one  of  the 
Society  Islands,  the  first-fruits  were  presented  to  the  god  Tani.  A 
poor  person  was  expected  to  bring  two  of  the  earliest  fruits  gathered, 
of  whatever  kind  ;  a  raatira  had  to  bring  ten,  and  chiefs  and  princes 
had  to  bring  more,  according  to  their  rank  and  riches.  They 
brought  the  fruits  to  the  temple,  where  they  threw  them  down  on  the 
ground,  with  the  words,  "  Here,  Tani,  I  have  brought  you  something 
to  eat."  ^  The  chief  gods  of  the  Easter  Islanders  were  Make-Make 
and  Haua.  To  these  they  offered  the  first  of  all  the  produce  of  the 
ground.^     Amongst  the  Maoris  the  offering  of  the  first-fruits  of  the 


1  W.  Mariner,  Account  of  the  Natives  *  Ellis,     Polyjtesian    Researches,     i. 
of  the  Tonga  Islands  (London,   1818),  350. 

ii.  196-203.  *  Tyerman  and    Bennet,  Journal  of 

2  Ch.  Wilkes,  Narrative  of  the  United  Voyages  and  Travels,  i.  284. 

States  Exploring  Expedition,  \\.  133.  ^  Geiseler,  /?/«   Oester -  Insel  i^^xXvci, 

3  Turner,  Samoa,  p.  70  sq.  1883),  p.  31. 


382  OFFERINGS  OF  FIRST-FRUITS  note 

sweet  potatoes  to  Pani,  son  of  Rongo,  the  god  of  sweet  potatoes,  was 
a  solemn  religious  ceremony.^ 

It  has  been  affirmed  that  the  old  Prussians  offered  the  first-fruits 
of  their  crops  and  of  their  fishing  to  the  god  Curcho,  but  doubt  rests 
on  the  statement.'^  The  Romans  sacrificed  the  first  ears  of  corn  to 
Ceres,  and  the  first  of  the  new  wine  to  Liber ;  and  until  the  priests 
had  offered  these  sacrifices,  the  people  might  not  eat  the  new  corn 
nor  drink  the  new  wine.^ 

The  chief  solemnity  of  the  Natchez,  an  Indian  tribe  on  the  Lower 
Mississippi,  was  the  Harvest  Festival  or  the  Festival  of  New  Fire. 
When  the  time  for  the  festival  drew  near,  a  crier  went  through  the 
villages  caUing  upon  the  people  to  prepare  new  vessels  and  new 
garments,  to  wash  their  houses,  and  to  burn  the  old  grain,  the  old 
garments,  and  the  old  utensils  in  a  common  fire.  He  also  pro- 
claimed an  amnesty  to  criminals.  Next  day  he  appeared  again, 
commanding  the  people  to  fast  for  three  days,  to  abstain  from  all 
pleasures,  and  to  make  use  of  the  medicine  of  purification.  There- 
upon all  the  people  took  some  drops  extracted  from  a  root  which 
they  called  the  "  root  of  blood."  It  was  a  kind  of  plantain  and 
distilled  a  red  liquor  which  acted  as  a  violent  emetic.  During  their 
three  days'  fast  the  people  kept  silence.  At  the  end  of  it  the  crier 
proclaimed  that  the  festival  would  begin  on  the  following  day.  So 
next  morning,  as  soon  as  it  began  to  grow  light  in  the  sky,  the  people 
streamed  from  all  quarters  towards  the  temple  of  the  Sun.  The  temple 
was  a  large  building  with  two  doors,  one  opening  to  the  east,  the  other 
to  the  west.  On  this  morning  the  eastern  door  of  the  temple  stood 
open.  Facing  the  eastern  door  was  an  altar,  placed  so  as  to  catch 
the  first  beams  of  the  rising  sun.  An  image  of  a  chotichouacha 
(a  small  marsupial)  stood  upon  the  altar ;  on  its  right  was  an  image 
of  a  rattlesnake,  on  its  left  an  image  of  a  marmoset.  Before  these 
images  a  fire  of  oak  bark  burned  perpetually.  Once  a  year  only,  on 
the  eve  of  the  Harvest  Festival,  was  the  sacred  flame  suffered  to  die 
out.  To  the  right  of  the  altar,  on  "  this  pious  morn,"  stood  the  great 
chief,  who  took  his  title  and  traced  his  descent  from  the  Sun.     To  the 


1  E.  Tregear,  "  The  Maoris  of  New  pended  to  his  edition  of  Dusburg's 
Zealand,"  Joiirn.  Anthrop.  Inst.  xix.  Chi-onicou  Pnissiae).  Cp.  W.  Mann- 
IIO.  hardt,  Die  Kornddiiionen,  p.  27. 

2  Hartknoch,  Alt  iind neiiesPrettssen, 

p.    161  ;    id.,  Disscrtationes  historicae  ^  Festus,  s.v.   sacrima,   p.    319,  ed. 

de  variis  rebus  F}-ussicis,  p.   163   (ap-  Miiller  ;  Pliny,  Nat.  Hist,  xviii.  §  8. 


OFFERINGS  OF  FIRST-FRUITS  383 


left  of  the  altar  stood  his  wife.  Round  them  were  grouped,  according 
to  their  ranks,  the  war  chiefs,  the  sachems,  the  heralds,  and  the  young 
braves.  In  front  of  the  altar  were  piled  bundles  of  dry  reeds,  stacked 
in  concentric  rings. 

The  high  priest,  standing  on  the  threshold  of  the  temple,  kept  his 
eyes  fixed  on  the  eastern  horizon.  Before  presiding  at  the  festival  he 
had  to  plunge  thrice  into  the  Mississippi.  In  his  hands  he  held  two 
pieces  of  dry  wood  which  he  kept  rubbing  slowly  against  each  other, 
muttering  magic  words.  At  his  side  two  acolytes  held  two  cups  filled 
with  a  kind  of  black  sherbet.  All  the  women,  their  backs  turned  to 
the  east,  each  leaning  with  one  hand  on  her  rude  mattock  and 
supporting  her  infant  with  the  other,  stood  in  a  great  semicircle  at 
the  gate  of  the  temple.  Profound  silence  reigned  throughout  the 
multitude  while  the  priest  watched  attentively  the  growing  light  in 
the  east.  As  soon  as  the  diffused  light  of  dawn  began  to  be  shot 
with  beams  of  fire,  he  quickened  the  motion  of  the  two  pieces  of 
wood  which  he  held  in  his  hands  ;  and  at  the  moment  when  the 
upper  edge  of  the  sun's  disc  appeared  above  the  horizon,  fire  flashed 
from  the  wood  and  was  caught  in  tinder.  At  the  same  instant  the 
women  outside  the  temple  faced  round  and  held  up  their  infants 
and  their  mattocks  to  the  rising  sun. 

The  great  chief  and  his  wife  now  drank  the  black  liquor.  The 
priests  kindled  the  circle  of  dried  reeds  ;  fire  was  set  to  the  heap 
of  oak  bark  on  the  altar,  and  from  this  sacred  flame  all  the  hearths 
of  the  village  were  rekindled.  No  sooner  were  the  circles  of  reeds 
consumed  than  the  chiefs  wife  came  forth  from  the  temple  and 
placing  herself  at  the  head  of  the  women  marched  in  procession 
to  the  harvest  fields,  whither  the  men  were  not  allowed  to  follow 
them.  They  went  to  gather  the  first  sheaves  of  maize  and  returned 
to  the  temple  bearing  them  on  their  heads.  Some  of  the  sheaves 
they  presented  to  the  high  priest,  who  laid  them  on  the  altar. 
Others  they  used  to  bake  the  unleavened  bread  which  was  to  be 
eaten  in  the  evening.  The  eastern  door  of  the  sanctuary  was  now 
closed,  and  the  western  door  was  opened. 

When  the  day  began  to  decline,  the  multitude  assembled  once 
more  at  the  temple,  this  time  at  its  western  gate,  where  they  formed 
a  great  crescent,  with  the  horns  turned  toward  the  west.  The 
unleavened  bread  was  held  up  and  presented  to  the  setting  sun, 
and  a  priest   struck  up  a  hymn  in  praise  of  his  descending  light. 


384 


OFFERINGS  OF  FIRST-FRUITS 


When  darkness  had  fallen  the  whole  plain  twinkled  with  fires,  round 
which  the  people  feasted  ;  and  the  sounds  of  music  and  revelry 
broke  the  silence  of  night.^ 


1  Chateaubriand,  Voyage  en  Avieri- 
que,  pp.  130-136  (Michel  Levy,  Paris, 
1870).  Chateaubriand's  description  is 
probably  based  on  earlier  accounts, 
which  I  have  been  unable  to  trace. 
Compare,  however,  Le  Petit,  "Relation 
des  Natchez,"  in  Remeil  de  voiages  au 


A^ord,  ix.  13  sq.  (Amsterdam  edition); 
De  Tonti,  "  Relation  de  la  Louisiane 
et  du  Mississippi,"  ib.  v.  122  ;  Char- 
levoix, Histoi7-e  de  la  Nouvelle  France, 
vi.  183  ;  Lettres  edijiantes  et  ciiriejises, 
vii.   18  sq. 


INDEX 


Aachen,  fire  festival  at,  ii.  251 
Aargau,  trees  planted  at  births  in,  ii. 

330 

Aberdeenshire,  ceremony  at  the  cutting 
of  the  last  sheaf  in,  i.  345 

Abyssinia,  rain  -  making  on  the  out- 
skirts of,  i.  53 

Abyssinian  festivals,  ii.  171 

Acagchemen  tribe,  adoration  of  the 
buzzard  by  the,  ii.  90,  91 

Adonis,  myth  and  worship  of,  i.  279- 
282,  296  ;  connection  with  vegeta- 
tion, i.  281  ;  gardens  of,  i.  284-296  ; 
rites  of,  similar  to  those  of  Osiris,  i. 
319,  320;  probable  origin  of  the  cult 
of,  i.  363  ;  lament  of,  i.  280,  399  ;  as 
a  pig,  ii.  49>  5° 

Aegira,  blood  drunk  at,  before  pro- 
phesying, i.  34 

Aethiopian  kings  confined  to  their 
palaces,  i.  164 

Afghan  Boundary  Mission,  reception 
of  the,  by  the  natives,  i.  155 

Afghanistan,  reception  of  strangers  in, 

Africa,  weather  kings  common  in,  i. 
44  ;  reluctance  to  accept  the  crown 
in  some  parts  of  West,  i.  1 18,  1 19  ; 
priestly  kings  on  the  west  coast  of,  i. 
112  ;  human  heart  eaten  in  the  Shire 
Highlands  of,  ii.  89 

Ague,  cure  for,  ii.  153 

Aht  Indians,  seclusion  of  girls  amongst 
the,  ii.  229,  230 

Ain,  May-day  customs  in  the  Departe- 
ment  de  1',  i.  88 

Aino  type  of  sacrament,  ii.  134-136 

Ainos,  bear  festival  of  the,  ii.  101-105  ; 
preparation  for  fishing,  ii.  122  ;  treat- 
ment of  the  bear,  ii.  132 

Alaskan  sable  hunters,  ii.  116 

Alban  hills,  i.  I  ;  mount,  i.  2 

Albania,  Easter  Eve  custom  in,  i.  276  ; 

VOL.  II 


ii.   181  ;  scapegoat  in,  ii.  201,  202  ; 
beating  in,  ii.  216 
Alexandria,     commemoration     of    the 
death  of  Adonis  and   Aphrodite   at, 
i.  279,  280 
Alfoers,  function   of  their   high   priest 
Leleen,  i.    166  ;  ceremony  for  restor- 
ing  the   soul,    i.    134,    135 ;  priest's 
hair  uncut,   i.    194;    priest   sows  the 
first  rice  seed  and  plucks  the  first  ripe 
rice,  ii.    71  ;  driving  away  the  devil 
by  the,  ii.  159 
Algeria,  midsummer  fires  in,  ii.  266 
Alligator,  the  man-eating,  ii.  109 
Alps,  May-day  custom  in  the,  i.  104 
Altisheim,  harvest  custom  in,  i.  337 
Altmark,    Whitsuntide    customs    in,    i. 

98  ;  Easter  bonfires,  ii.  254 
Amboina,  soul -abstracting  in,  i.  139, 
140  ;  sprinkling  the  sick  with  spices 
in,  i.  154  ;  hair  burying  in,  i.  201  ; 
disease  boats  in,  ii.  188 ;  strength 
thought  to  be  in  the  hair  in,  ii. 
328;    offerings  of  first-fruits   in,   ii. 

377 
Amenhotep   IV   and   the   sun -god,    i. 

314.  315     .      . 
America,  belief  in  the  resurrection  of 

the  bufialo  in  the  western  prairies  of, 

ii.  123 
Amnion,    rage    of   the    sun  -  god    Ra 

against,  i.  315  ;  rams  held  sacred  by 

the  worshippers  of,  ii.  92,  93 
Andamanese  belief  in  the  reflection  as 

the  soul,  i.  145 
Anderida,  wealds  of  Kent,  Surrey,  and 

Sussex,  remnants  of  the  forest  of,  i. 

57 
Angel-man,  beheading  the,  ii.  267 
Angouleme,  custom  of  burning  a  poplar 

on  .St.  Peter's  Day  in,  i.  loi 
Angoy,  king  of,  must  have  no  bodily 

defects,  i.  221 

2  C 


386 


INDEX 


Animal  worship,  two  types  of,  ii.  133, 
134  ;  sacred  carried  in  procession,  ii. 
139-147  ;  employed  as  a  scapegoat, 
ii.  189-191,  194,  195;  eaten  to  obtain 
its  quality,  ii.  86,  87  ;  spared  by 
savages  from  fear  of  the  vengeance  of 
other  animals  of  the  same  kind,  ii. 
107 -1 10;  respect  shown  by  the 
savage  for  the  animal  he  kills,  ii. 
1 10-132  ;  Savage  belief  in  the  resur- 
rection of  the,  ii.  122-125  ;  burnt  as 
representative  of  the  spirit  of  vegeta- 
tion, ii.  282-284 

Annamites,  soul  superstition  amongst 
the,  i.  132 

Antaymour  kings  responsible  for  the 
general  welfare,  i.  46 

Antrim,  harvest  custom  in,  i.  339 

Apache    Indians,  rain-making   by  the, 

i.  15 

Apalai  Indians,  ceremony  on  the  arrival 

of  a  stranger  by  the,  i.  153,  154 
Aphrodite,  i.  279 
Apis  the  sacred  Egyptian  bull  drowned, 

ii.  61  sq. 
Apollo  Diradiotes,  blood  of  sacrificial 

lamb  drunk  in  the  temple  of,  i.  34 
Apple-tree,  superstition  with  regard  to 

the,  by  barren  women,  i.  73 
Arabia,     belief    concerning     a     man's 

shadow  in,  i.  143 
Arabian  stories,  the  external  soul  in,  ii. 

318,  319 
Arabic  belief  in  the  properties  of  lion's 

fat,  ii.  86 
Arabs,  rain-making  by  the  heathen,  i.  20 
Arcadia,  rain-charm  in,  i.  21  ;  beating 

the  scapegoat,  ii.  214 
Archon  of  Plataeae,  the,  may  not  touch 

iron,  i.  173 
Arden,  forest  of,  i.  57 
Argive  tradition  concerning  Dionysus, 

i.  324,  325 
Ariadne,  marriage  of,  i.  104 
Aricia,    "there    are    many    Manii    at," 

explanation  of  the  proverb,  ii.  82,  83 
Arician  Grove,  the,  i.    1-6  ;    ritual,  ii. 

63,  64  ;  harvest  celebration,   ii.   67  ; 

Manius    the    traditional    founder    of 

the,  ii.  84  ;  sacrament,  ii.  83,  84 
Aru  Islands,  soul  superstition  in  the,  i. 

125,    126  ;   custom   after  a  death   in 

the,    i.    147  ;    hair    cutting,    i.    201  ; 

dog's  flesh  eaten,  ii.  87 
Arval  Brothers,  priestly  college  of  the, 

and  the  sacred  grove,   i.  65  ;  sacred 

grove  of  the,  and  iron,  i.  172 
Aryans,  the,  tree  worshippers,  i.  56-59, 

99  ;    totemism  and   the,   ii.  38  ;    oak 

the  sacred  tree  of  the,  ii.  291  ;  primi- 
tive worship,  ii.  370 


Ascension  Day  custom,  i.  265 
Aschbach,  harvest  custom  in,  i.  368 
Ash  Wednesday  customs,    i.   254-257  ; 

ii.  29,  48,  251 
Ashantee,  royal  blood  not  shed  in,  i. 

181  ;  harvest  festival  in,  ii.  374 
Asia  Minor,  Pontiffs  of,  i.  7,  8 
Athene,    relation   of    the    goat   to,   ii. 

Athens,  annual  marriage  of  the  queen 
to  Dionysus  at,  i.  103,  104  ;  rites  of 
Adonis  observed  in,  i.  284,  285  ; 
scapegoats  in,  ii.  212  ;  ritual  at  the 
sacrifice  of  the  ox  in,  ii.  38,  39,  41 

Attis,  myth  and  festival  of,  i.  296-298  ; 
ii.  50  ;  a  tree-spirit  or  corn-spirit,  i. 
298-300  ;  probability  that  the  high 
priest  of,  was  slain  in  the  character 
of  the  god,  i.  300  ;  probable  origin 
of  the  cult  of,  i.  363  ;  relation  to 
Lityerses,  i.    396,   397  ;  as  a  pig,  ii. 

49'  50 
Australia,  rain-making  in,  i.  20,  21  ; 
ceremony  on  entering  strange  terri- 
tory by  the  Australians,  i.  156  ;  seclu- 
sion of  women  in,  i.  170;  blood  may 
not  be  spilt  on  the  ground  in  some 
parts  of,  i.  181,  182  ;  hair  burning 
after  child-birth  in,  i.  206  ;  totemism, 

ii-  133.  334-336 
Australian  blacks'  charm  for  staying  the 
sun,  i.  25  ;  attack  the  dust  columns 
of  red  sand,  i.  29,  30 ;  fear  of 
women's  blood,  i.  185,  186  ;  ii.  238  ; 
remedy  for  toothache,  ii.  149  ;  annual 
expulsion  of  ghosts,  ii.  163 

Kamilaroi,   cannibalism   by    the, 

ii.  88 

medicine  man  and  recall  of  the 

soul,  i.  131,  132 

Wotjobaluk,  rain-making  by  the, 

i-  "4 

Austria,  charm  for  lulling  the  wind  in, 

i.  28  ;  old  peasant  belief  in  the  souls 

of  trees  in,  i.  61 
Auxerre,  reaping  custom  at,  i.  335 
Axim,  annual  expulsion  of  devils  at,  ii. 

170 
Aymara   Indians,    scapegoat    used    by 

the,  in  times  of  plague,  ii.  191 
Aztecs,   the,  and  the  reflection-soul,  i. 

145  ;  aversion  to  wine,  i.  185 

Baba,  a  name  given  to  the  last  sheaf, 

i-  339,  340 
Babar  Islands,  restoration  of  the  soul 
in  the,  i.  137  ;  the  soul  believed  to 
be  in  the  shadow,  i.  142 
Babylon,  Sacaea  festival  at,  i.  226 
Babylonian  legend  concerning  the  god- 
dess Istar,  i.  287 


INDEX 


387 


Baffin  Land,  expulsion  of  evil  by  the 
Eskimo  of,  ii.  165 

Bagota,  restrictions  on  the  heir  to  the 
throne  in,  ii.  225 

Balder  killed  by  the  mistletoe,  ii.  244 
sq.  ;  the  oak,  ii.  295  ;  life  of,  in  the 
mistletoe,  ii.  359-362 

Balder's  bale-fires,  ii.  289  sq. 

Bali,  mice  and  the  -  rice  fields  of  the 
island  of,  ii.  131  ;  periodic  expulsion 
of  devils,  ii.  174,  175;  custom  at  a 
birth,  ii.  329 

Balquhidder,  harvest  custom  in,  i.  344 

Banjar  kings  held  responsible  for  the 
weather,  i.  46,  47 

Banks  Islanders,  the  tamaniu  of  the, 
ii.  331,  332 

Baranton,  fountain  of,  i.  15 

Barcelona,  Mid-Lent  custom  in,  i.  262 

Bari  tribe,  rain  kings  of  the,  i.  52,  53 

Barotse,  the  chief  a  demigod  in,  i.  46 

Barren  women's  superstition  regarding 
the  apple-tree,  i.  73 

Bassam,  Great,  sacrifice  of  oxen  at,  ii. 
41,  42  ;  ceremony  of  driving  out  the 
evil  spirit,  ii.  161,  162 

Basutos,  the,  and  the  reflection-soul,  i. 
145  ;  cannibalism  by  the,  ii.  89 ; 
offerings  of  first-fruits,  ii.  373 

Bat,  the,  ii.  334-337 

Battambang,  rain-charm  in,  i.  19 

Battas,  the,  fighting  the  wind,  i.  28,  29  ; 
refuse  to  fell  trees,  i.  64,  65  ;  soul 
superstition,  i.  124,  125,  135,  136 ; 
soul  straying,  i.  160 ;  ceremony  of 
making  the  curse  to  fly  away  by  the, 
ii.  150,  151  ;  totemism  amongst  the, 
ii.  340,  341  ;  belief  in  plurality  of 
souls,  ii.  341 

Bavaria,  May  custom  in,  i.  84  ;  Whit- 
suntide representative  of  the  tree- 
spirit  in,  i.  242  ;  harvest  custom  in, 
i.  342  ;  ii.  27,  28  ;  cure  for  fever,  ii. 
153;  Easter  bonfires  in,  ii.  254  ;  mid- 
summer bonfires  in,  ii.  278 

Bear,  Shrovetide,  i.  254,  255  ;  sacrifice 
of  the,  ii.  99  -  108  ;  ceremony  at 
killing  a,  ii.  111-113,  115;  ceremony 
before  a  bear-hunt,  ii.  112,  113 

Bears,  dead,  treated  with  respect,  ii. 
111-113 

Beasts,  divine,  held  responsible  for  the 
course  of  nature,  i.  48 

Beating  as  a  ceremonial  purification,  ii. 
213-217,  232-234 

Beauce,  straw  man  in,  ii.  40 

Beavers,  superstition  about  killing,  ii, 
116 

Bechuanaland,  rain-charm  in,  i.  18;  sun 
superstition  in,  i.  23  ;  hack-thorn 
held    sacred   in,    i.    69 ;    purification 


after  travel,  i.   157  ;  crocodile  super- 
stition in,  ii.  55,  56  ;  transference  of 

ills  in,  ii.  149 
Bedouins,  pursuing  the  wind,  i.  29 
Belfast,  harvest  custom  at,  i.  336,  337 
Belgium,   procession  with  wicker  giant 

in,  ii.  281 
Belli-Paaro,  ceremony  of,  in  Quoja,  ii. 

347,  348 
Beltane  fires,  ii.  254-258 
Bengal,   Gardens  of  Adonis  in,  i.  2S8, 

289 
Bernkastel,  reaping  custom  in,  ii.  15 
Berry,  belief  regarding  the  birth  of  the 

corn-spirit  in,  ii.  23  ;  harvest  custom, 

ii.  26 
Bhagats,  mock  human  sacrifices  by  the, 

i.  252,  253 
Bhotan,  man  worshippers  in,  i.  42 
Biajas  of  Borneo,  expulsion  of  diseases 

to  sea  by  the,  ii.  192 
Bidasari,  ii.  325  sq, 
Bilaspur,  custom  at,  on  the  death  of  a 

Rajah,  v  232 
Birch-tree  dressed  in  women's  clothes 

in  Russia  at  Whitsuntide,  i.  77 
Births,  trees  planted  at,  ii.  229,  230 
Bison,  resurrection  of  the,  ii.  122,  123 
Bithynia,  lament  by  the  reapers  in,  i. 

365 
Black  Lake,  i.  15 

Blankenfelde,  harvest  custom  in,  i.  370 
Bleeding  trees,  i.  61 
Blekinge,  midsummer  ceremonies  in,  i. 

292 
Blood,  the  soul  thought  to  be  in  the, 

i.    178,    179;    not   eaten,    ib.;    royal 

blood   not  spilt  upon   the  ground,  i. 

179-183;     ill    effect    of    seeing,    i. 

185,    186  ;  dread  of  contact  with,  i. 

185-187  ;     primitive   dread   of   men- 

struous,  ii.  238-241 
Blood-drinking,  inspiration  by,  i.  34,  35 
Boba,  a  name  given  to  the  last  sheaf,  i. 

340,  341 
Boeotians  of  Plataea,  festival  of  the,  i. 

100-103 
Boeroe,  ceremony  at  the  rice  harvest  in, 

ii.  71 
Bohemian  midsummer    custom,  i.    79  ; 

ii.    259  ;    Mid  -  Lent   custom,    i.  82  ; 

Whit  Monday  custom,  i.  91,  244-247  ; 

ceremony   of  carrying  out  Death,  i. 

258-260;  superstition  regarding  death, 

i.   260 ;  ceremony  of  bringing   back 

summer,  i.   263  ;    harvest  custom,  i. 

340  ;  white  mice  spared  in  Bohemia, 

ii.    131,    132 ;    superstition    held    by 

poachers  in  Bohemia,  ii.  288 
Bohmer    Wald    Mountains,    custom    of 

the  reapers  in  the,  ii.  15 


388 


INDEX 


Bolang    Mongondo,    recapture    of    the 

soul  in,  i.    131  ;   preservation  of  cut 

hair,  i.  203 ;  ceremony  at  rice  harvest 

in,  ii.  71,  72 
Bombay,  soul  superstition  in,  i.  127 
Bones  of  animals  not  broken  by  savages, 

ii.  124 
Boni,  king  of,  and  his  courtiers,  i.  222, 

223 
Booandik  tribe  superstition  concerning 

the  blood  of  women,  i.  186 
Book  of  the  Dead,  i.  312 
Bormus,  the  name  given  to  the  lament 

of  the  Bithynian  reapers,  i.  365,  398 
Borneo,   custom   in,  regarding  infested 

persons,  i.  154 
Bouphonia,  the,  ii.  38-41 
Brabant,    North,    Whitsuntide    custom 

in,  i.  88 
Brahman   soul  story,  i.   128,   129;   sin 

eaters,  ii.  156 
Brahmans,    temple    of    the,    i.    230 ; 

transference  of  sins  by  the,  ii.  200 
Brandy,  North  American  Indian  theory 

about,  ii.  87 
Brazilian  Indians,  self-beating  by  the, 

ii.  215,  216  ;  treatment  of  girls  at  the 

age  of  puberty  by  the,  ii.  231,  232 
Bresse,    May  customs  in,  i.  98  ;    cere- 
mony regarding  the  last  sheaf,  i.  408 
Brest,  fire  festival  at,  ii.  261 
Breton  peasant  and  the  wind,  i.  30 
Brian5on,    May-day  in   the  neighbour- 
hood of,  i.  95  ;  harvest  ceremony  at, 

ii.  II 
Bride,  a  name  given  to  the  binder  of 

the  last  sheaf,  i.  345 
Brie,  May-day  custom  in,  i.  84  ;  harvest 

custom  in,  i.   370,   375  ;    burning  of 

mock  giant  in,  ii.  282 
Britanny,    reaping   custom   in,   i.    335, 

336  ;  midsummer  fires  in,  ii.  261 
British  Columbia,  fish  ceremony  by  the 

Indians  of,  ii.  121 
Bruck,  harvest  custom  in,  i.  333,  334 
Briid's  bed  in  the  Highlands,  i.  97 
Brunnen,  Twelfth  Night  custom  at,  ii. 

182 
Brunswick,  Whitsuntide  customs  in,  i. 

90 
Buddhist  animism,  i.  59 

Tartar  worship,  i.  42,  43 

Buffalo,  belief  in  the  resurrection  of  the, 

ii.  123  ;  held  sacred  by  the  Todas,  ii. 

136,  137 

bull,  ii.  19 

Bulgarian  rain -charm,   i.    16;    custom 

at  the  laying  of  a  foundation  stone,  i. 

144  ;  harvest  custom,  i.  341 
Bull,   Dionysus  as  a,  i.  325,  326 ;    ii. 

37-44  ;  the  corn-spirit  as  a,  ii.  19-24  ; 


Osiris  and  the,  ii.    59-61  ;  sacred,  ii. 

60 ;  as  a  scapegoat,  ii.  200,  201 
Burghers,  first  seed  sowing  and  reaping 

amongst  the,  ii.   72 ;  transference  of 

sins  by  the,  ii.  151,  152 
Burgimdian  kings  deposed  in  times  of 

scarcity,  i.  47 
Burma,  mode   of  executing    princes  of 

the  blood  in,  i.   180;    head-washing 

in,  i.  188,  189  ;  mock  burial  in  time 

of  sickness  in,   ii.   84 ;  ceremony  of 

driving    away   cholera    in,    ii.    161  ; 

offering  of  first-fruits  in,  ii.  374 
Burmese  and  the  soul,  i.  130 
Burnt   sacrifices   among   the   Celts,    ii. 

278-280 
Buro  Islands,  dog's  flesh  eaten  in  the, 

ii.  87  ;  disease  boats,  ii.  187 
Burying  alive,  i.  217 
Busiris,  legend  of,  i.  400,  401 
Butterfly,  the  Samoans  and  the,  ii.  56 
Buzzard,  sacrifice  of  the  sacred,  ii.  90- 

92 
Byblus,   lamentation   for   the   death  of 

Adonis  at,  i.  280 

Calabria,  expulsion  of  witches  in,  ii. 

181 
Calcutta,  iron-charm  used  in,  i.  176 
Calf,  the  corn-spirit  as  a,  ii.  19-24 
Calicut,  kings  killed  at  the  expiry  of 

twelve  years  in,  i.  224,  225 
Californian  Indians,  their  opinion  of  the 

dust  columns,  i.  30 
sacrifice  of  the   buzzard,   ii.   90, 

91 

Caligula,  i.  4 

Callander,    Beltane    fires    in,    ii.    254, 

Cambodia,  search  for  inspired  man  in 
time  of  epidemic  in,  i.  36  ;  kings  of 
fire  and  water  in,  i.  53-56  ;  its  sacred 
tree,  i.  67;  kings  of,  i.  118;  touch- 
ing the  king's  body  in,  i.  172  ;  man's 
head  not  touched  in,  i.  189;  ceremony 
at  the  cutting  of  the  king's  hair  in,  i. 
197  ;  temporary  kings  of,  i.  228  ;  the 
Stiens  of  Cambodia  and  the  killing 
of  animals,  ii.  115  ;  expulsion  of  evil 
spirits,  etc.  in,  ii.  178,  184;  seclusion 
of  girls  in,  ii.  235 

Cambridgeshire,  harvest   custom  in,  i. 

341,  342 

Cameroons,  the  life  of  a  person  sup- 
posed to  be  bound  up  with  that  of  a 
tree  by  the,  ii.  329 

Canadian  Indians,  detention  of  the 
soul  amongst  the,  i.  139 ;  beaver 
hunting  by  the,  ii.  1 16,  1 17 

Candlemas  Day  customs,  i.  97  ;  ii.  29, 
48 


INDEX 


389 


Canelos    Indians,    their   belief    of   the 

soul  in  the  portrait,  i.  148 
Cannibalism,  ii.  88,  89 
Capital  offences,  i.  162,  190 
Carcassonne,   hunting   the  wren  in,  ii. 

143.  144  .      . 

Caribs,   the,   belief  in   the   plurality  of 

souls,  ii.  339 
Carinthia,  ceremonies  on  St.    George's 

Day  in,  i.   84,  85  ;  ceremony  at  the 

installation    of  a    prince    of,   i.    232, 

Carmona,  custom  in,  ii.  184,  185 
Carnival,    ceremony    of    burying    the, 

i.  244,  252-257,  270,  272 
Carnival  Fool,  i.  256 
Carpathus  islanders,  reluctance  to  have 

their  likenesses  drawn,  i.    148,   149  ; 

transference  of  sickness  by  the,  ii.  154 
Cashmere  stories,  the  external  soul  in, 

ii.  302-304 
Cat,   the  corn-spirit   as  a,    ii.    11,    12; 

burnt,  ii.  283 
Caterpillars,  method  of  freeing  a  garden 

from,  ii.  130 
Cattle,    trees    and,    i.    72   sq.  ;    driven 

through  the  fire,  ii.  273 
Cedar,  the  sacred,  of  Gilgit,  i.  69 
Celebes,  the,  and  the  soul,  i.  123-125  ; 

custom  regarding  infested  persons,  i. 

154;      superstition      regarding      the 

knife,  i.  177  ;  blood  not  spilt  on  the 

ground  by  the,  i.    182  ;  custom  at  a 

birth,  ii.  329  ;  harvest  festival,  ii.  376 
Celtic    human    sacrifices,    ii.    278-284  ; 

the  external  soul  in  Celtic  stories,  ii. 

313,  314 

Ceram,  rain -making  in,  i.  13  ;  super- 
stition regarding  the  blood  of  women 
in,  i.  187  ;  hair  cutting  superstition  in, 
i.  194  ;  ii.  328  ;  disease  boats  in,  ii. 
185,  186  ;  ceremony  in  epidemic,  ii. 
187 ;  seclusion  of  girls  in,  ii.  229 ; 
initiation  ceremony,  ii.  354-356 

Chaeronea,  human  scapegoat  in,  ii.  210, 
211 

Chambery,  threshing  ceremony  at,  ii. 

23 
Chedooba,  ceremony  on  felling  a  tree 

in  the  island  of,  i.  64 
Cheremiss,  expulsion  of  Satan  by  the, 

ii.  180,  181 
Cherokee  Indians,  purification  festival 

of  the,  ii.  166,  167 
Chester,   procession   of  mock  giant  at, 

ii.  281 
Chibchas,  weather  kings  of  the,  i.  44 
Children  sacrificed  by  their  parents,  i. 

235-237 
Chile,  preservation  of  cut  hair  in,  i.  204 
China,  emperors  of,  offer  public  sacri- 


fices, i.  8  ;  rain-charm  in,  i.  18  ;  em- 
peror held  responsible  for  drought, 
etc. ,  i.  49  ;  abstention  from  knives 
after  a  death  in,  i.  177  ;  ceremony  to 
welcome  the  return  of  spring  in,  ii.  42, 
43  ;  special  seat  of  courage  amongst 
the  Chinese,  ii.  87 ;  cannibalism  in,  ii. 
89 ;  human  scapegoat  in,  ii.  191  ; 
festival  of  the  aboriginal  tribes  of,  ii. 

193 
Chios,  rites  of  Dionysus  at,  i.  329 
Chippeways,      seclusion      of     women 

amongst  the,  ii.  239,  240 
Chiriguanos,  seclusion  of  girls  by  the, 

ii.  231 
Chitome,  the,  i.   113-I15;  not  allowed 

to    die     a     natural    death,    i.     217, 

218 
Cholera,  driving  away,  ii.  161,  189,  191 
Chontal   Indians,    the  nagual  amongst 

the,  ii.  333 
Christian,  Captain,  shooting  of,  i.  181 
Christmas  customs,  i.  60,  334 ;  ii.  6,  7, 

29-31,  141,  142,  144 
Chrudim,     ceremony    of    carrying    out 

Death  at,  i.  259,  260 
Chuwash,  the,  test  of  a  suitable  sacri- 
ficial victim,  i.  36 
Circassians,  the  pear-tree   believed  to 

be  the  protector  of  cattle  by  the,  i. 

73       .  . 
Circumcision,  i.  17 1 

Clucking-hen,  ii.  8 

Cobern,  fire  festival  at,  ii.  250 

Cobra  Capella,  sacrifice  of  the,  ii.  94, 

95 

Cock,  the  corn-spirit  as  a,  n.  7- 10 
Columbia   River,    Indians  of  the,    and 

the  salmon,  ii.  121,  122 
Comanches,  rain-charm  used  by  the,  i. 

18 
Compitalia,  festival  of  the,  ii.  83 
Congo  belief  in  the  souls  of  trees,  i.  60; 

the   Chitome  in  the  kingdom   of,   i. 

113;    negroes    and    soul    selling,    i. 

1 39 ;  initiatory  rites  in  the  valley  of 

the,  ii.  345,  346 
Coorg  rice -harvest  ceremonies,  ii.  72, 

73 
Corea,    kings    of,     confined    to    their 
palaces,  i.  164  ;  may  not  be  touched, 
i.   172;  tigers'  bones  valuable  in,  ii. 

87 
Corn  drenched  as  a  rain-charm,  i.  286 ; 

double  personification  of  the,   i.  358, 

359  ;  reaper,  binder,  or  thresher  wrapt 

up  in  corn,  i.  370,  371 

baby,  ii.  23 

goat,  ii.  13,  14 

mother,  i.  232,  233  ;  a  prototype 

of  Demeter,  i.  356 


390 


INDEX 


Corn  queen,  i.  341 

spirit,  the,    as   the   grandmother, 

etc.,  i.  336-343;  as  youthful,  i.  343- 
346  ;  death  of,  i.  363,  364  ;  binding 
persons  in  sheaves  as  representatives 
of  the,  i.  367-372 ;  pretence  of  kill- 
ing the,  or  its  representative,  i.  372- 
380 ;  represented  by  a  stranger,  i. 
375-3S0 ;  represented  by  a  human 
victim,  i.  390-395  ;  how  the  repre- 
sentative is  chosen,  i.  393 ;  as  an 
animal,  ii.  1-67;  as  acock,  ii.  7-10; 
as  a  hare,  ii.  11  ;  as  a  cat,  ii.  11,  12  ; 
as  a  goat,  ii.  12-17;  ^s  a  bull,  ii. 
19-24 ;  as  a  calf,  ib.  ;  as  a  cowf,  ii. 
20,  21  ;  as.  a  mare,  ii.  24,  25  ;  as  a 
•  horse,  ii.  26 ;  as  a  pig,  ii.  26-31  ; 
parallelism  between  the  anthropo- 
morphic and  theriomorphic  concep- 
tions of  the,  ii.  32 ;  death  of  the,  ii. 
33 ;  suggested  explanation  of  the 
embodiment  of  the,  in  animal  form, 
ii.  34 ;  the  ox  as  the  embodiment  of 
the,  ii.  41-43 

wolf,  ii.  3-7,  30 

woman,  i.  342,  343 

Cornwall,    May-day  custom  in,    i.  75  ; 
midsummer  bonfires   in,  i.   loi  ;    ii. 
262  ;  reaping  cries  in,  i.  407 
Corsica,  midsummer  fires  in,  ii.  266 
Cough,  cure  for,  ii.  154 
Court  ceremonies,  i.  22,  23  ;  ii.  88 
Cow,    the  corn-spirit  as  a,  ii.  20,   21  ; 
sacred,  ii.  61  ;  man  in  cow's  hide,  ii. 
145,    146  ;    cow   as  a  scapegoat,  ii. 
200,  201 
Cracow,  harvest  customs  in,  i.  340 
Crannon,  rain-charm  at,  i.  21 
Creek    Indians,     festival    of    the    first- 
fruits  amongst  the,  ii.  75-78  ;  opinions 
held  regarding  the  properties  of  vari- 
ous foods  amongst  the,  ii.  85,  86  ;  se- 
clusion of  women  by  the,  ii.  239 
Crete,  sacrifices  in,  i.   173  ;   festival  of 
Dionysus    in,    i.    324 ;    worship    of 
Demeter  in,  i.  331 
Croatia,  beating  in,  ii.  216 
Crocodiles    spared    from    fear    of    the 
vengeance  of  other  crocodiles,  ii.  109 
Crops,  kings  and  priests   punished  for 
the  failure   of  the,   i.  46-48  ;  human 
sacrifices  for  the,  i.  383,   384 ;  cere- 
monies at  the  eating  of  the  new,  ii. 
69,    71  ;    sacramental    eating   of   the 
new,  ii.  68-77 
Crying  the  Neck,  i.  405-408 
Curka  Coles  of  India,  their  belief  that 
the   tops   ot    trees   are   inhabited,   i. 

Curse,  ceremony  of  making   the  curse 
to  fly  away,  ii.  150,  151 


Cyzicus,    construction    of    the    council 
chamber  of,  i.  174 

Dacotas  and  the   resurrection  of  the 

dog,  ii.  123 
Daedala,  festival  of  the,  i.  IOO-103 
Dahomey,  king  of,  a  capital  offence  to 

see  him  eat,  i.  162 
Damaras,  custom  of  the,  after  travel,  i. 

158  ;  blood  of  cattle  not  shed  by  the, 

i.  182 
Danae,  ii.  237 
Danger   Islanders,  soul  snare  used  by 

the,  i.  138,  139 
Danzig,  burying  of  cut  hair  in,  i.  202  ; 

reaping     custom,     i.    333 ;     harvest 

ceremony,  i.  367,  368 
Dards,  the,  rain-charm,  i.  19 
Darfur,   veiling  the   sultan   of,   i.   162  ; 

the    sultans    and    their    courtiers,    i. 

222 ;    the   liver   thought   to   be    the 

seat  of  the  soul  in,  ii.  88 
Darowen,  midsummer  bonfires  at,  ii.  262 
Dead  Sunday,  i.  254,  260 
Death,  preference  for  a  violent,   i.  216, 

217  ;  superstition  concerning,  i.  260  ; 

"carrying  out,"  i.  257-261,  264-271  ; 

ii.  207  ;  driving  out,  i.  258,  259,  272, 

276;    in   the    custom   of  "carrying 

out "    Death    is    probably    a    divine 

scapegoat,  ii.  206-208  ;  ceremonies  at 

the  burying  of,  ii.  250 ;  effigy  of,  i. 

257  sq. 
Debden,  May  Day  custom  in,  i.  76 
Deer,  regard  for,  ii.  1 17,  118 
Deities,  reduplication  of,  i.  360-362 
Demeter,  the  corn  mother,  i.  331,  332  ; 

festivals  of,  ii.  44-47  ;  as  a  pig,  ii.  44- 

49  ;  legend  of  the  Phigalian,  ii.  49  ; 

representation   of  the  black,   ii.  49  ; 

and  Proserpine,  myth  of,  i.  330,  331  ; 

probable  origin  of,  i.  355  sq.  ;  proto- 
types of,  i.  356,  357_ 
Demons,  the  soul  carried  off  by,  i.  132- 

Denderah,  tree  of  Osiris  at,  i.  308 
Denmark    Christmas    customs,    ii.    29, 

30  ;  midsummer  bonfires,  ii.  289 
Devils,   ceremony  at  the  expulsion   of, 

ii.   151,    158,  159-162,    170-185,    192, 

193,    203  ;  represented  by  men  and 

expelled,  ii.  183-185 
Devonshire  reaping  cries,  i.   405,  406  ; 

rain-charm,  i.   408  ;  cure  for  cough, 

ii.  154 
Diana,  rule  of  the  priesthood  of,  i.  2,  3, 

6  ;  ceremonies  at  the  festival  of,  i. 

5  ;    Arician    Grove    said    to    be  first 

consecrated  to  her  by  Manius  Egeri- 

us,  i.  5  ;  a  tree  goddess,  i.  105 
Diana's  mirror,  i.  i 


INDEX 


391 


Dieyerie  of  South  Australia,  rain-mak- 
ing by  the,  i.  20 ;  tree  superstition 
amongst  the,  i.  62 

Dingelstedt,  harvest  custom  at,  i.  371 

Dionysus,  marriage  of,  i.  104 ;  titles  of, 
i.  320,  321  ;  myth  of,  i.  322-325  ; 
rites  of,  i.  324,  329  ;  ii.  43-46,  90  ; 
rites  of,  similar  to  those  of  Osiris,  i. 
319,  320;  as  an  animal,  i.  325-327, 
ii.  34-38 ;  association  of,  with  Demeter 
and  Proserpine,  ii.  37 

Diseases  sent  away  in  boats,  ii.  185- 
189,  192  sq. 

Divine  beasts,  i.  48 

king,  dependence  of  nature  upon 

the,  i.  109 

kings,  i.  49  ;  care  taken  of,  i.  115  ; 

cease  to  govern,  i.  118,  119 

kings    and    priests,    burdensome 

observances  placed  upon,  i.  110-I18  ; 
effects  of  these  burdens,  i.  1 18-120 

Man  as  scapegoat,  ii.  201,  205 

persons,  seclusion  of,  ii.  242,  243 

spirit,  transmigration  of,  i.  42-44 

Divining  rods  made  from  the  mistletoe, 

Dog,  the  corn-spirit  as  a,  ii.  3-7  ;  the 
flesh  of  the,  eaten,  ii.  87 ;  resurrection 
of  the,  ii.  123  ;  used  as  a  scapegoat,  ii. 

194.  195 
Domalde,   King  of  Sweden,  sacrificed, 

'•  47 

Douai,  annual  procession  at,  ii.  280 

Dreams,  festival  of,  ii.  165,  166 

Druids,  oak-worship  of  the,  i.  58 

Dublin,  May  Day  custom  in,  i.  lOl 

Duk-duk,  the,  ii.  352  sq. 

Duke  of  York  Island,  fishing  ceremony 
by  the  natives  of,  ii.  120 

Dulyn,  i.  15 

Dunkirk,  annual  procession  at,  ii.  280,28 1 

Dust  columns,  i.  30 

Dutch  criminals,  cutting  the  hair  of,  to 
enforce  confession,  ii.  328 

Dyaks,  belief  in  the  souls  of  trees 
amongst  the,  i.  59,  60 ;  abduction  of 
the  soul,  i.  132,  133  ;  restoration  of 
the  soul,  i.  138  ;  harvest  custom,  i.  68, 
69,  353,  354 ;  the  Dyaks  and  bad 
omens,  ii.  151  ;  custom  in  epidemic, 
ii.  84 ;  may  not  eat  venison,  ii.  86, 
87 ;  spare  the  crocodile,  ii.  109 ; 
Dyaks  and  the  palm-tree,  ii.  329  ; 
festival  of  first-fruits,  ii.  376 

East  Indian  Islands,  supposed  cure 
for  epilepsy  in  the,  ii.  148,  149 

Easter  customs,  i.  272,  276,  334  ;  ii.  29, 
181,  216,  217 

fires,  ii.  251,  252 

Islanders,    blood    of    an    animal 


not  shed  by  the,   i.    182,  183  ;  offer- 
ings of  first  fruits,  ii.  381 
Eating  animals  to  get  their  qualities,  ii. 
85-89 

the  god,  ii.  67-90 

and    drinking,    precautions   taken 

at,  i.  160-162 
Edersleben,  midsummer  fire  festival  in, 

ii.  262 
Efugaos,  cannibalism  by  the,  ii.  88 
Egeria,  i.  5 

Eg}^pt,  beasts  responsible  for  the  course 
of  nature  in  Upper,  i.  48  ;  Egyptian 
kings  deified,  i.  49,  50 ;  Egyptian 
kings  blamed  for  failure  of  crops,  i. 
50  ;  ancient  Eg)-ptian  kings  did  not 
drink  wine,  i.  184,  185  ;  temporaiy 
rulers  in  Upper  Eg)-pt,  i.  231  ;  cus- 
tom of  burning  red-haired  men  by  the 
ancient  Egyptians,  i.  307  ;  religion  of 
ancient  Eg}-pt,  i.  313 ;  Egyptians 
and  the  pig,  ii.  52,  53,  56,  57  ;  the 
bulls  Apis  and  Mnevis  worshipped, 
ii.  60  ;  sacred  cattle  in  Eg}-pt,  ii.  60, 
61  ;  sacrifice  of  the  ram  in,  ii.  92,  93  ; 
Egyptian  type  of  sacrament,  ii.  134- 
136 ;  Egj-ptian  scapegoat,  ii.  200 ; 
the  external  soul  in  Egyptian  story, 
ii.  315-318 
Eifel  mountains,  fire  festival  in  the,  ii. 
247,  248  ;  harvest  omens  in  the,  ii. 
271 
Eisenach,  ceremony  of  bringing  back 
summer  in,  i.  263 ;  ceremony  of 
carrying  out  death  in,  ib. 
Elan,  regard  for  the,  ii.  117,  118 
Elephant,  ceremony  at  the  killing  of  an, 

ii.  113-115 
Eleusis,  mysteries  of,  ii.  37 
Elk,  regard  for  the,  ii.  117,  118 
Ellwangen,  harvest  ceremony  in,  ii.  17 
Emin   Pasha's  reception    in   a    Central 

African  village,  i.  155 
Emu  wren,  ii.  336,  337 
Encounter   Bay    tribe,   their   dread   of 

women's  blood,  i.  186 
English  tradition  concerning  the  killing 

of  the  wren,  ii.  140,  141 
Entlebuch,  human  scapegoat  in,  ii.  199 
Entraigues,  hunting  the  wren  in,  ii.  144 
Epidemic,  ceremony  in  time  of,  i.  36  ; 

ii.  84,  187-189 
Epilepsy,  supposed  cure  for,  ii.  14S,  149 
Erfurt,  harvest  custom  in,  i.  336 
Ertingen,  midsummer  custom  in,  i.  89 
Erzgebirge,  Shrovetide  custom  in  the,  i. 

244 
Eskimos,   charm  for  lulling  the  wind, 
i.  28  ;  Eskimos  and  the  soul,  i.  122  ; 
reception   of  strangers,    i.    155 ;  Es- 
kimo women,  i.  170 


392 


INDEX 


Essex,  hunting  the  wren  in,  ii.  143 

Esthonian  superstition  regarding  the 
welfare  of  cattle,  i.  72  sq.  ;  blood  not 
tasted  by  the  Esthonians,  i.  178,  179  ; 
belief  concerning  women's  blood,  i. 
187  ;  preservation  of  the  parings  of 
nails  by  the  Esthonians,  i.  204 ; 
carrying  out  the  effigy  of  Death,  i. 
270 ;  ceremony  at  the  eating  of  the 
new  corn,  ii.  69,  70 ;  dread  of  the 
weevil  by  the  Esthonian  peasants,  ii. 
129,  130 

Ethiopian  kings  and  their  courtiers,  i. 
222 

Etruscan  wizards,  i.  22 

European  rain-charm,  i.  18  ;  forests,  i. 
57  ;  fire  festivals,  ii.  246-285 

Evils,  expulsion  of,  ii.  145  Sij.  ;  occa- 
sional, ii.  158-162  ;  periodic,  ii.  162- 
182  ;  two  kinds  of  expulsion  of  evils, 
the  direct  or  immediate,  and  the  in- 
direct or  mediate,  ii.  158;  general 
observations  on,  ii.  202-206 ;  trans- 
ference of,  ii.  145  sq. 

Fauns,  representation  of  the,  ii.  35  ; 
the  Fauns  wood  and  corn-spirits,  ii. 

35,  36 

Feilenhof,  the  wolf  a  corn-spirit  in,  ii.  3 

Feloupes  of  Senegambia,  charm  for 
rain-making,  i.  18 

Fern  seed,  midsummer,  ii.  365,  366 

Fernando  Po,  restrictions  on  the  food 
of  the  king  of,  i.  208 

Fever,  cure  for,  ii.  152,  153 

Fida,  no  one  to  drink  out  of  the  king's 
glass  in,  i.  166 

Field  of  Mars,  chariot  race  on  the,  ii. 
64-66 

Fiji,  charm  used  for  staying  the  sun  in, 
i.  24  ;  gods  of,  i.  39  ;  soul  extraction 
in,  i.  138  ;  belief  in  two  souls  in,  i. 
145  ;  eating  in  the  presence  of  sus- 
pected persons  avoided  in,  i.  160 ; 
self-immolation  at  old  age  in,  i.  216  ; 
expulsion  of  devils  in,  ii.  175,  176  ; 
initiatory  rites  in,  ii.  344,  345  ;  offer- 
ings of  first-fruits  in,  ii.  377,  378 

Finland,  wind  selling  in,  i.  27  ;  cattle 
protected  by  the  wood  god  in,  i.  105, 
106 ;  ceremony  at  the  killing  of  a 
bear  in,  ii.  112 

Fire  festivals,  human  sacrifices  offered 
at,  i.  251 

festivals  in   Europe,   ii.    246-285  ; 

they  were  charms  to  make  the  sun 
shine,  ii.  267,  274 

kings,  i.  53-56 

sacred,    made   by    the    friction  of 

wood,  ii.  269  ;  made  with  oak  wood, 
ii.  292,  293 


Fire  spirit,  expulsion  of  the,  ii.  178 

Firstborn  sacrificed,  i.  236,  237 

First-fruits,  festival  of  the,  ii.  75-78  ; 
.offerings  of,  ii.  373-384 

Fish,  respect  shown  by  savages  to,  ii. 
1 18-122;  fish  preachers,  ii.  119,  120 

Fladda's  chapel  and  wind-making,  i. 
26,  27 

Flamen  Diahs,  rules  of  life,  i.  I17  ;  not 
allowed  to  walk  under  a  trellised 
vine,  i.  183,  184;  cuttings  from  the 
hair  and  nails  buried,  i.  200  ;  restric- 
tion on  the  food  of  the,  i.  207 

Virbialis,  i.  6 

Flaminica,  rules  of  life  for  the,  i.  117, 
118 

Flanders,  midsummer  bonfires  in,  ii. 
267  ;  Flemish  cure  for  ague,  ii.  153 

Flax-pullers,  custom  of  the,  i.  375 

Florence,  "sawing  the  old  woman  "  in, 
i.  261 

Florida,  sacrifice  of  the  firstborn  by  the 
Indians  of,  i.  236,  237 

Folk  tales,  resurrection  in,  ii.  125 

Food,  unconsumed,  buried,  i.  166  ; 
prohibited  food,  i.  207,  208  ;  strong 
food,  ii.  85 

Forests,  Europe  covered  with,  in  pre- 
historic times,  i.  56 

Fors,  the,  of  Central  Africa,  preserva- 
tion of  nail  parings  by  the,  i.  204,  205 

Forsaken  sleeper,  i.  96 

Foulahs  of  Senegambia  spare  the  croco- 
dile, ii.  no 

France,  harvest  customs  in  the  north- 
east of,  ii.  4 

Franche  Comte,  harvest  customs  in,  ii.  1 7 

Frankish  kings  not  allowed  to  cut  their 
hair,  i.  193 

Friedingen,  harvest  custom  in,  ii.  27 

Friesland,  harvest  customs  in  East,  ii.  8 

Frog-flayer,  i.  92 

Funeral  custom,  i.  129,  130 

Fiirstenwalde,  harvest  ceremonies  in, 
ii.  7 

Gablingen,  harvest  customs  in,  ii.  13 

Galela,  ceremony  at  the  initiation  of 
boys  amongst  the,  ii.  353 

Galicia,  harvest  customs  in,  ii.  8 

Gall-bladder  the  special  seat  of  courage 
amongst  the  Chinese,  ii.  87 

Gareloch,  Dumbartonshire,  harvest  cus- 
toms on  some  farms  on  the,  i.  345 

Garos,  rain-charm  used  by  the,  i.  18 

Georgia,  rain-charm  in,  i.  17 

Germany  —  German  peasants  and  a 
whirlwind,  i.  30 ;  sacred  groves 
common  amongst  the  ancient  Ger- 
mans, i.  58  ;  ceremony  on  felling  a 
tree,  i.  64  ;  rain-charm,  i.  93 ;  custom 


INDEX 


393 


after  a  death,  i.  147  ;  superstition  re- 
garding the  knife,  i.  177;  superstition 
concerning  hair  cutting,  i.  196,  199  ; 
harvest  custom,  i.  337,  345,  374,  375  ; 
ii.  9  ;  harvest  cries,  i.  408,  409  ;  way 
to  free  a  garden  from  caterpillars,  ii. 
130;  beating  as  a  charm,  ii.  216, 
217  ;  oak  the  sacred  tree,  ii.  291  ; 
oak  log  burnt  on  Midsummer  Day,  ii. 
294 ;  the  external  soul  in  German 
stories,  ii.  310-312 

Gervasius,  rain  spring  mentioned  by, 
i.  19 

Ghosts,  the  soul  carried  off  by,  i.  129- 
132  ;  annual  expulsion  of  the  ghosts 
of  the  dead,  ii.  163 

Giant,  sham,  procession  and  burning  of 
the,  ii.  280-282 

Gilgit,  ceremony  on  felling  a  tree  in, 
i.  65  ;  sacred  cedar  of,  i.  69  sq.  ;  har- 
vest custom  at,  ii.  73,  74 

Gilyak  sacrifice  of  the  bear,  ii.  105- 107 

Girls  secluded  at  puberty,  ii.  225-247  ; 
reason  for,  ii.  238-242 ;  not  allowed 
to  touch  the  ground  or  see  the  sun,  ii. 
225-253  ;  traces  in  folk  tales  of  the 
rule  which  forbids  girls  at  puberty  to 
see  the  sun,  ii.  235-237 

Goat,  the,  sacred,  ii.  56,  63  ;  Diony- 
sus as  a,  i.  326-328  ;  ii.  34-37  ;  the 
corn-spirit  as  a,  ii.  12-19 

God,  killing  the,  i.  213  ;  ii.  218-222  ; 
killing  a  god  in  animal  Ibrm,  i.  327, 
328  ;  motives  for  killing  the  god,  i. 
214-216 

God's  Mouth,  the  name  of  the  supreme 
ruler  of  the  old  Prussians,  i.  223 

Gods  die  and  are  buried,  i.  213,  214 

incarnate,  slain,  ii.  218-222 

Gold  Coast,  sacrifices  of  the  negroes  of 
the,  i.  67  ;  their  superstition  witir  re- 
gard to  iron,  i.  173 

Golden  Bough,  Turner's  picture  of  the, 
i.  I  ;  legend  of  the,  i.  4  ;  the  repre- 
sentative of  the  tree-spirit,  i.  107 ; 
between  heaven  and  earth,  ii.  223- 
243  ;  what  was  it,  ii.  224  ;  the  Golden 
Bough  is  the  mistletoe,  ii.  363,  368  ; 
why  was  the  mistletoe  called  the 
Golden  Bough,  ii.  365  ;  the  Golden 
Bough  an  emanation  of  the  sun's  fire, 
ii.  367 

Goldi  sacrifice  of  the  bear,  ii.  107,  108 

Gommern,  harvest  festival  at,  i.  370 

Gonds,  human  sacrifices  by  the,  i.  252, 
384  ;  mock-Iiuman  sacrifices,  i.  252  ; 
scapegoats  amongst  the,  ii.  200 

Good  Friday  custom,  ii.  216 

Gout  transferred  from  a  man  to  a  tree, 

"•  153 
Grand  Lama,  death  and  reappearance 


of  the,  i.  42,  43  ;  and  the  shadow  of 
Sankara,  i.  142 

Grandmother,  a  name  given  to  the  last 
sheaf,  i.  336 

Granny,  a  name  given  to  the  last  sheaf, 
i.  336 

Grass  king,  i.  91-93,  247 

Griitz,  midsummer  custom  in,  ii.  267 

Greece,  rain  -  making  in,  i.  16;  tree 
worship  in,  i.  58,  59,  99  ;  festivals  of 
the  Greeks,  i.  99,  100,  103  ;  cere- 
mony at  the  laying  of  a  foundation 
stone  in,  i.  144;  sacrificial  ritual  in,  ii. 
54,  55  ;  human  scapegoats  in,  ii.  210- 
217;  midsummer  fires  in,  ii.  266; 
the  external  soul  in  Greek  stories, 
ii.  305-307 

Green  George,  i.  84-86 

Grenoble,  May  Day  in,  i.  94 ;  harvest 
custom  in,  ii.  15,  47 

Grihya-Sutras,  provision  in  the,  for  the 
burning  of  cut  hair,  i.  202 

Grossvargula,  Whitsuntide  custom  in, 
i.  91 

Ground,  sacred  persons  not  allowed  to 
touch  the,  ii.  224,  243  note  ;  girls  at 
puberty  not  allowed  to  touch  the,  ii. 
225  -  253  ;  sacred  things  may  not 
touch  the,  ii.  243  tiote 

Grvineberg,  harvest  ceremony  in,  ii.  1 1 

Guanches,  rain-charm  in,  i.  19 

Guatemala,  the  nagual  amongst  the,  ii. 

333>  334  . 

Guaycurus  and  storms,  i.  28 
Guinea,  secreting  of  cut  hair  and  nails 

in,   i.   203  ;  annual  expulsion  of  the 

devil  by  the  negroes  of,  ii.  170  ;  time 

of  licence  in,  ii.  204 
Guyenne,  harvest  ceremony  in,  ii.  6 

Hack-thorn,  sacred,  i.  69 

Hadeln,  reaping  custom  in  the  district 

of,  i.  333 
Haida  Indian  wind-charm,  i.  26 
Hair,  burning  of  loose,  i.  205  ;  burning 
after  child-birth,  i.  206  ;  cut  hair  de- 
posited in  a  safe  place,  i.  200-205  ; 
cutting,  i.  193  sq.  ;  most  sacred  day 
of  the  year  appointed  for  hair  cutting, 
i.  197  ;  superstition  concerning  the 
cutting  of  the,  i.  196,  198,  199  ;  cut 
only  during  a  storm,  i.  199 ;  hair- 
cutting  as  a  disinfectant,  i.  206,  207  ; 
magic  use  of  cut  hair,  i.  198,  199  ; 
strength  supposed  to  be  in  the,  ii.  328  ; 
hair  not  cut,  i.  193-195  ;  superstition 
about  cutting  the  hair  and  nails,  i. 
193-207 
Halberstadt,   human  scapegoats  m,  11. 

199  ^  ,       .. 

Halibut,  festival  in  honour  of  the,  n.  121 


394 


INDEX 


Halmahera,  rain-making  in,  i.  13,  21 
Hampstead,  forest  of,  i.  57 
Hare,  the  corn-spirit  as  a,  ii.  10  sq. 
Harran,  ritual  observed  by  the  heathen 

Syrians  of,  i.  283 
Harvest  child,  a  name  given  to  the  last 

sheaf,  i.  344 
cock,  a  name  given  to  the   last 

sheaf,  ii.  7,  8 

cries,  i.  404-409 

customs,  i.  333-347,  352,  353>  367- 

381,  408  ;  ii.  4-27,  32,  47,  48,  68-73, 

213 
festival,  i.  169;  ii.  171,  172,  374- 

376,  382-384 

goat,  u.  13 

maiden,  a  prototype  of  Proserpine, 

i-  356 

May,  i.  68,  69,  81,  82 ;  ii.  4 

omens,  ii.  271 

queen,  i.  344 

songs  and  cries,  ii.  364-366,  404- 

409  . 

Harz  Mountains,  Easter  fires  in  the,  ii. 

253.. 
Hawaii,  detention  of  the  soul  in,  i.  139 ; 

capital  offences  in,  i.  190 
Hay  family,  the,  and  the  mistletoe,  ii. 

362 
Head,    sanctity    of    the,    i.    187-193; 

ceremony  at  the  washing  of  the,  i. 

188 
Headache,  transference  of,  ii.  149 
Headington,  May-day  custom  at,  i.  94, 

95 
Heaven,    the    Golden    Bough  between 

heaven  and  earth,  ii.  223-243 
Hebrides,  representation   of  spring   in 

the,  i.  97 
Heligoland,      disappearance     of      the 

herring  from,  ii.  120 
Herbrechtingen,   threshing   custom  in, 

ii.  22 
Hercynian  forest,  i.  56,  57 
Hereford,  sin  eaters  in,  ii.  154,  155 
Herefordshire,  midsummer  fires  in,  ii. 

262 
Hermsdorf,  harvest  custom  in,  i.  338 
Herodotus,     story    by,    of    the     wind 

fighters  of  Psylli,  i.  29 
Herring,    disappearance   of    the,    from 

Heligoland,  ii.  120 
Hertfordshire  harvest  custom,  ii.  24 
Hessen,  Ash  Wednesday  custom  in,  ii. 

29  ;  sowing-time  customs  in,  ii.  48 
Hidatsa  Indians,  belief  in  the  plurality 

of  souls  amongst  the,  ii.  339 
Hierapolis,  pigs  sacred  at,  ii.  50 
Himalayas,  scapegoats  in  the  Western, 

ii.  194 
Hindoo  cure  for  the  murrain,  ii.  191  ; 


festival  of  Ingathering,  ii.  272  ;  girls 
and  puberty,  ii.  234,  235  ;  the  ex- 
ternal soul  in  Hindoo  stories,  ii.  298- 
302 

Hindoos,  the,  test  of  a  suitable  sacri- 
ficial victim,  i.  36 ;  Hindoos  and 
yawning,  i.  123  ;  custom  of  nail 
cutting  by  the,  i.  196  ;  festival  at  the 
eating  of  the  new  rice  by  the,  ii.  73  ' 

Hindoo  Koosh,  smoke  from  the  sacred 
tree  inhaled  by  the  sybil,  i.  35  ;  blood 
sucking  the  test  of  a  diviner  amongst 
the,  ih.  ;  expulsion  of  devils  amongst 
the,  ii.  173 

Hippolytus,  i.  6 

Holland,  Whitsuntide  custom  in,  i.  ZZ ; 
Easter  fires,  ii.  253 

Holstein,  reaping  custom  in,  i.  333 ; 
healing  effects  of  the  mistletoe  in,  ii. 
289 

Hornkampe,  harvest  custom  in,  i.  337 

Horse,  the  corn-spirit  as  a,  ii.  24-26 ; 
sacrifice  of  the,  ii.  64 

Horses  excluded  from  the  Arician  grove, 
i.  6 

and  Virbius,  ii.  62-64 

Hos,  harvest  festival  amongst  the,  ii. 
171,  172;  time  of  licence  with  the, 
ii.  204  ;  offering  of  first-fruits  by  the, 

ii-  374 

Hottentot  priests  do  not  use  iron,  i.  173 ; 
wind-charm,  i.  27,  28  ;  sheep  driven 
through  the  fire  by  the,  ii.  273 

Hovas  of  Madagascar,  offerings  of  first- 
fruits  by  the,  ii.  374 

How,  coffer  of  Osiris  at,  i.  309 

Huahine,  offerings  of  first-fruits  in,  ii. 

Huitzilopochtli,  dough  image  of  the 
Mexican  god,  made  and  eaten,  ii.  81 

Human  sacrifices,  i.  235-237,  251,  252, 
381  ;  replaced  by  mock  sacrifices,  i. 
250-253 

victim  represents  the  corn-spirit, 

i-  390-395 
Hungary,  Whitsuntide  custom  in,  i.  93 ; 

the     external     soul     in     Hungarian 

stories,  ii.  320,  321 
Hunger,  expulsion  of,  ii.  210,  21 1 
Hunting  the  wren,  ii.  140-144 
Hurons,   the,  and  fish  bones,  ii.   1 19 ; 

their  idea  of  the  soul,  i.  122  ;  driving 

away  sickness  amongst  the,  ii.  162 
Huskanaw,  the  name   of  an  initiatory 

ceremony    amongst    the    Indians    of 

Virginia,  ii.  348 
Hylae,    sacred    men    inspired    by    the 

image  of  Apollo  at,  i.  37 

Ibo,  king  of,  confined  to  his  premises, 
i.  164 


INDEX 


395 


Iddah,  king  of,  asserts  that  he  is  god, 
i.  41,  42 

Ihlozi,  the,  of  the  Zuhis,  ii.  332 

Incarnate  gods,  i.  30-54 

Incarnation,  temporary  and  permanent, 
i.  32,  37-42 

Incas  of  Peru  revered  as  gods,  i.  49  ; 
preservation  of  cut  hair  and  parings 
of  the  nails  of  the,  i.  203  ;  restrictions 
upon  the  prince  who  is  to  become  Inca 
of  Peru,  ii.  225  ;  ceremony  for  the 
expulsion  of  diseases,  etc.  by  the,  ii. 
167-169 

Indersdorf,  harvest  custom  in,  ii.  17,  iS 

India,  devil  dancer  drinks  sacrificial 
blood  in  Southern,  i.  34 ;  human 
gods  in,  i.  41,  42  ;  marriage  of  shrubs 
and  trees  in,  i.  60 ;  sin  eating  in,  ii. 
J 55)  156  ;  iron  used  as  a  charm  in,  i. 
I75>  176;  harvest  custom  in  the 
Central  Provinces  of,  i.  371,  372  ; 
custom  during  cholera  in  Central 
Provinces  of,  ii.  189 ;  offerings  of 
first-fruits  in,  ii.  374,  375 

Indians  of  Alaska,  preservation  of  cut 
hair  by  the,  i.  201,  202 

of  Arizona  offer  human  sacrifices, 

i.  251 

of    Guayaquil     sacrifice    human 

beings  at  seed  time,  i.  381 

of  Guiana,   treatment  of  girls  at 

puberty  by  the,  ii.  232-234 
of  Peru  and    their    fish   gods,   ii.  • 

118,  119 

of  Virginia,    initiatory  ceremony 

amongst  the,  ii.  348,  349 

Influenza,  ii.  190 

Initiatory  rites,  simulation  of  death  and 
resurrection  at,  ii.  342-358 

Innuit  of  Alaska,  custom  after  a  death 
amongst  the,  i.  177 

Inspiration,  i.  33  ;  by  blood  drinking, 
i-  34»  35  ;  l^y  "se  of  sacred  tree,  i. 
35;  36 

Inspired  men,  i.  36,  37 

victims,  i.  36 

Irayas  of  Luzon,  offerings  of  first-fruits 
by  the,  ii.  377 

Ireland,  May  Day  in  the  south-east  of, 
i.  94  ;  hunting  the  wren  at  Christmas 
in,  ii.  142,  143  ;  midsummer  fires  in, 
ii.  263,  264 

Iron,  superstitious  aversion  to,  i.  172- 
174  ;  as  a  charm,  i.  175 

Iron-Beard,  Dr.,  i.  249,  257 

Iroquois,  ceremony  at  the  festival  of 
dreams  by  the,  ii.  165,  166  ;  scape- 
goat used  by  the,  ii.  194,  195  ;  time 
of  licence  amongst  the,  ii.  204 

Isis,  a  corn  goddess,  i.  310,  311 ;  named 
the  moon  by  the  aboriginal  inhabi- 


tants of  Eg}'pt,  i.  311  ;  as  a  cow,  ii. 
61 

Isle  of  Man,  wind  selling  in  the,  i.  27  ; 
hunting  the  wren  at  Christmas  in  the, 
ii.  142  ;  midsummer  bonfires,  ii.  263 

Issapoo,  the  cobra  capella  the  guardian 
deity  of  the  negroes  of,  ii.  94,  95 

Istar,  legend  concerning  the  goddess,  i. 
287 

Italones,  cannibalism  by  the,  ii.  88 

Italy,  tree  worship  in  ancient,  i.  58,  59 ; 
custom  of  "sawing  the  old  woman" 
in,  i.  261,  262  ;  gardens  of  Adonis 
in,  i.  294 ;  midsummer  fires  in,  ii.  266 ; 
oak  the  sacred  tree  in,  ii.  291  ;  the 
external  soul  in  Italian  stories,  ii. 
307,  308 

Itonamas,  the,  and  the  soul,  i.  123 

Itzgrund,  harvest  custom  in,  i.  338 

Ivy  girl,  i.  344 

Jack-in-the-green,  i.  88,  89,  247 
Jambi,  temporary  kings  in,  i.  231,  232 
Japanese,   expulsion  of  evil   spirits   by 

the,  ii.  176 
Jarkino,  belief  in  animate  trees  in,  i.  61 
Javanese    and    rice    bloom,   i.    60,   61  ; 

ceremony   at    rice    harvest,    i.    355  j 

Javanese  and  the  soul,  i.  124,  125 
Jerome  of  Prague,  i.  24 
Jeypur,    scapegoat    used    in    cases    of 

smallpox  in,  ii.  190,  191 
Jubilee,  i.  225 
Jupiter  represented  by  an  oak  on  the 

Capitol  at  Rome,  ii.  291 

Kaffa,  worship  of  human  god   in,  i. 

Kafir  boys  at  circumcision,  i.  171  ;  New 

Year     festival,     ii.      74 ;      elephant 

hunters,  ii.  113,  1 14;  burying  of  cut 

hair  and  nails  by  the  Kafirs,  i.  202, 

203 
Kakian  Association,  ii.  354-357 
Kakongo,  king  of,  not  allowed  to  touch 

certain  European  goods,  i.  160;  not 

seen  eating,  i.  162 
Kalamba,  ceremonies  on  a  visit  to,  by 

subject  chiefs,  i.  159 
Kalmucks,   consecration   of  the   white 

ram  by  the,  ii.  136 
Kamant  tribe  do  not  allow  a  natural 

death,  i.  217 
Kamtchatkans  excuse  themselves  before 

killing  land  or  sea  animals,  ii.  no, 

III;  respect  the  seal  and  sea  lion, 

ii.  Ill 
Kanagra,    spring    custom    in,    i.    276, 

277 
Kangra,  custom  at,  qn  the  death  of  a 

Rajah,  i.  232  :  sin  eaters  in,  ii.  156 


396 


INDEX 


Karens,  funeral  custom  by  the,  i.  129, 
130;  transference  of  the  soul  in 
Karen,  i.  140 ;  dread  of  women's 
blood  by  the,  i.  186  ;  belief  concern- 
ing the  head,  i.  187  ;  custom  at  rice 
sowing,  i.  354,  355 

Karma  tree,  i.  289 

Karoks  of  California  and  salmon  catch- 
ing, ii.  121 

Kasyas,  expulsion  of  devils  by  the,  ii. 
184 

Katodis,  ceremony  before  felling  a  tree 
by  the,  i.  63 

Kent,  the  ivy  girl  in,  i.  344 

Keramin  tribe  of  New  South  Wales, 
rain-making  by  the,  i.  15 

Key  Islanders,  soul  superstition  amongst 
the,  i.  130,  131  ;  expulsion  of  sick- 
ness by  the,  ii.  160 

Khonds,  human  sacrifices  by  the,  i. 
384-390  ;  rain-charm,  ii.  42  ;  expul- 
sion of  devils  by  the,  ii.  173,  174 

Kibanga,  kings  killed  in,  i.  218 

Kilema,  ceremony  in,  before  a  stranger 
is  allowed  to  see  the  king,  i.  159 

Kilimanjaro  Mount,  believed  to  be 
tenanted  by  demons,  i.  151 

Kimbunda,  cannibalism  amongst  the, 
ii.  88,  89 

King  Hop,  the  title  of  a  temporary 
king,  i.  230 

of  the  calf,  ii.  21 

of  the  May,  i.  247 

of  the  sacred  rites,  i.  7 

of  the  Wood,  i.    1-108  ;    why  so 

called,  i.  7  ;  never  a  temporal  sove- 
reign, i.  51  ;  an  incarnation  of  the 
tree  spirit,  i.  106-108;  probabihty 
that  he  was  formerly  slain  annually, 
i.  240,  241  ;  similarity  to  North 
European  personages,  i.  249,  250 ; 
a  personification  of  the  oak,  ii.  364  ; 
probably  burned  in  a  fire  of  oak 
^wood,  ii.  363-365 

Kings — as  gods,  i.  8  ;  supposed  to  con- 
trol the  weather,  i.  44-46 ;  punished 
for  the  failure  of  crops,  i.  46-48 ; 
killed,  i.  48  ;  divine,  i.  49  ;  of  nature, 
i.  52  ;  of  fire,  i.  53-56  ;  of  rain,  i,  52, 
53  ;  of  water,  i.  53-56  ;  divine,  cease 
to  govern,  i.  118,  119;  abdicate, 
i.  120;  guarded  against  strangers, 
i.  158,  159;  veiled,!.  162,  163;  at 
meals,  i.  162;  confined  to  their  palaces, 
i.  164,  165  ;  killed  when  they  show 
signs  of  decay,  i.  217-223  ;  killed  at 
expiry  of  fixed  term,  i.  223  ;  mitiga- 
tion of  the  above  rule,  kings  allowed 
to  defend  themselves,  i.  224  ;  killed 
annually,  i.  225-227  ;  temporary,  i. 
228-234  ;  temporary  kings  sometimes 


hereditary,  i.  228,  232 ;  sons  sacrificed 
in  times  of  great  danger,  i.  235 

Kingsmill  Islands,  offerings  of  first- 
fruits  in,  ii.  378 

Kirn,  the  name  of  a  harvest  supper,  i. 

,345 
Klausenburg,  harvest  custom  at,  ii.  9 
Kloxin,  harvest  ceremony  in,  i.  369 
Knives,  reluctance  to  use,  after  a  death, 

i.  176,  177 
Kobi,  offering  of  first-fruits  by  the,  ii. 
^376 
Kochs  of  Assam,  offerings  of  first-fruits 

by  the,  ii.  374 
Kohlerwinkel,  harvest  ceremony  at,  ii. 
^27 
Kolosh     Indians,    seclusion     of    girls 

amongst  the,  ii.  230 
Koniags,  seclusion  of  girls  amongst  the, 

ii.  230 
Konigshain,   driving   out  Death  in,  i. 

276 
Konkan,  scapegoat  used  in  Southern, 

in  cases  of  cholera,  ii.  191 
Konz,  midsummer   fire   festival   in,  ii. 

260,  261 
Kostroma,  funeral  of,  i.  273 
Kostrubonko,  i.  272 
Kukulu,  the  priest  king,  i.  1 12,  1 13 
Kumis,  driving  away  small-pox  by  the, 

ii.  161 
Kupalo,  funeral  of,  i.  272 ;  representa- 
tion of,  i.  292 
Ku^Dole's  festival,  i.  294 

Lachlin  family  and  the  deer,  ii.  363 
La   Ciotat,    hunting   the   wren   in,    ii. 

144 
Lada,  funeral  of,  i.  273 
Lagos,  human  sacrifices  at,  i.  383 
Lakor,  expulsion  of  diseases  to  sea  in, 

ii.  192 
Lamas,  Grand,  i.   42,  43 ;  the  chief  of 

the,  i._  43,  44 
Lamb  killed  sacramentally  by  the  Madi 

tribe  of  Central  Africa,  ii.  137,  138 
Lamps,  festival  of,  ii.  176 
Laos,  precautions  against  strangers  in, 

i.    152;  belief  in    plurality    of  souls 

amongst  the,  ii.  339 
Laosia,  women  worshippers  in,  i.  42 
La  Palisse,  harvest  custom  in,  ii.  68 
Lapis  manalis,  i.  22 
Lappland,  wind  selling  in,  i.  27  ;  cere- 
mony at  the  sacrifice  of  an  animal  in, 

ii.    123  ;   seclusion  of  women  in,  ii. 

240 
Larch-tree,  sacred,  i.  61,  62 
Lazy  man,  the,  i.  89 
Lechrain,  midsummer  fires  in,  ii.  258, 

259 


INDEX 


397 


Leipzig,  carrying  out  the  effigy  of  Death 

in,  i.  268 
Lent  customs,  ii.  247-249 
Leopard,  ceremony  at  the  kiUing  of  a, 

ii.  114 
Leper,  custom  at  the  cleansing  of  a,  ii. 

Lerwick  wind-sellers,  1.  27 

Leti,  expulsion  of  diseases  to  sea  by 
the,  ii.  92 

Leucadian  scapegoat,  ii.  213 

Lewis,  wind  selling  in  the  island  of,  i. 
27 

Lhoosai,  harvest  festival  of  the,  i.  69 

Libchowic,  Mid -Lent  custom  in  the 
neighbourhood  of,  i.  93 

Licence,  periods  of,  ii.  204 

Life  of  a  person  bound  up  with  that  of 
a  plant,  ii.  328-330 

Life  plants,  ii.  329,  330 

Lille,  harvest  ceremonies  at,  ii.  25, 
26 

Linus,  the  name  given  to  the  Phoenician 
lament  at  vintage  time,  i.  365 

song,  i.  398,  399 

identified  with  Adonis,  i.  399 

Lion,  ceremony  at  the  killing  of  a,  ii. 
114;  Arabic  belief  in  the  properties 
of  lion's  fat,  ii.  86 

Lithuania,  sun  worshippers  in,  i.  24, 
25  ;  tree  worshippers  in,  i.  58  ;  super- 
stition concerning  the  felling  of 
sacred  groves  in,  i.  66,  67  ;  May  cus- 
toms in,  i.  83,  84 ;  custom  after 
a  funeral  in,  i.  177  ;  harvest  custom 
in,  i.  340,  341 ;  ceremony  at  threshing 
time  in,  i.  372,  373  ;  ceremonies  by 
the  peasants  at  the  eating  of  the  new 
corn  in,  ii.  69,  70 

Little  leaf  man,  i.  88 

Lityerses  compared  with  harvest  cus- 
toms, i.  366,  367  ;  story  of,  i.  392- 
395  ;    relation   of,   to    Attis,    i.    396, 

397  .  ,      ^ 
the  name  given  to  a  song  by  the 

Phrygian  reapers,  i.  365,  366 

Liver,  the,  thought  to  be  the  seat  of 

the  soul,  ii.  88 

Livonia,  sacred  grove  in,  i.  65 

Llandebie,  sin  eating  in,  ii.  155 

Loango,    king    of,    deposed    when    the 

harvest    fails,    i.    47  ;    supernaturally 

endowed  kings  of,  i.  116;  a  capital 

offence  to  see  the  king  eat,  i.  161  ; 

the  king  confined  to  his  palace  after 

coronation,  i.    164  ;  food  left  by  the 

king  buried,  i.  166  ;  food  restrictions 

in,    i.    207,    208 ;   girls   secluded   at 

puberty  in,  ii.  226 

London,   midsummer   pageants   in,   ii. 

281 


Longnor,  harvest  custom  at,  ii.  25 
Lost  children,  superstition  concerning, 

i.  63 
Loucheux  Indians,  abstinence  from  the 

sinew  of  the  thigh  by  the,  ii.  127,  128 
Luchon,  midsummer  fire  ceremony  at, 

ii.  282 
Lumley,  Sir  J.,  excavation  of  the  site 

of  the    Diana    Nemorensis   by,  i.   2 

note 
Llineberg,  harvest  custom  in,  i.  377 
Lusatia,  ceremony  of  carrying  out  Death 

in,  i.  259,  264 

M'Bengas,  Hfe  of  a  child  supposed  to 

be   bound  up  with  that  of  a  tree  by 

the,  ii.  328,  329 
Macusis  of  British  Guiana,  treatment  of 

girls  at  the  age  of  puberty  by  the,  ii. 

232  sq. 
Madagascar,     power    ascribed    to    the 

souls  of  the  dead  in,  i.  132  ;  blood  of 

nobles  may  not   be  shed  in,  i.  181  ; 

crocodile  not  killed  in,  ii.  109,  no 
Madenassana  bushmen,  the  goat  sacred 

to  the,  ii.  56 
Madi  tribe,   burying  of  the  parings  of 

the  nails  by  the,  i.  202  ;  lamb  killed 

sacramentally  by  the,  ii.  137,  138 
Magic,  sympathetic,  i.  9- 1 2 

use  of  cut  hair,  i.  198-200 

Maiden,    a    name    given    to    the  last 

handflil  of  corn,  i.  344,  345 
Maize,  mother  of  the,  i.  350-352 
Makololo,    burning  or  burying  of  cut 

hair  by  the,  i.  205 
Malabar,  reverence  for  the  cow  in,  ii. 

200 
Malagasy,  vehicle  used  by  the,  for  the 

transference  of  ills,  ii.  149,  150 
Malay  poem,  the  external  soul  in  a,  ii. 

325>  326 
Malays  and  the  soul,  i.   124;  ii.  331  ; 

do  not  touch  a  man's  head,  i.  189 
Maldives,    cuttings   from   the  hair  and 

nails  buried  by  the  natives  of  the,  i. 

200 
Mamilian  tower,  ii.  67 
Mamurius  Veturius  or  the  old  Mars,  ii. 

208-210 
Man  in  cow-skin,  ii.  145,  146 
gods  in  the  South  Sea  Islands,  i. 

38,  39 
Mandan    Indians,   and    their   portraits, 

i.    148  ;  expulsion  of  devils  by   the, 

ii.  183,  184 
Maneros,  the  name  given  to  the  lament 

of  the  Egyptian  reapers  at  the  cutting 

of  the  first  sheaf,  i.  364 
Mangaia,  priests  called  gods  in,  i.  33  ; 

spiritual   and   temporal    government 


398 


INDEX 


in,     i.     1 20;     story    of    a    warrior's 

shadow,  i.  142,  143 
Man-god,  two  types  of,  i.  12 
Mania,  i.  6 
"  Manii,    there   are   many  at    Aricia," 

explanation    of  the   proverb,    ii.    82, 

83 

Manius  Egerius,  traditional  founder  of 
the  Arician  Grove,  etc. ,  i.  5  ;  ii.  84 

Maori  ceremonies  on  entering  strange 
territory,  i.  156;  the  Maoris  and 
dead  bodies,  i.  169 ;  fear  of  the 
blood  of  women,  i.  186  ;  sacredness 
of  the  head  amongst  the,  i.  191,  192  ; 
ceremony  at  hair  cutting,  i.  196,  197  ; 
fishing  custom,  ii.  120;  offerings  of 
first-firuits,  ii.  381,  382 

Mare,  the  corn-spirit  as  a,  ii.  24-26 

Marimos,    human  sacrifices  by   the,    i. 

383 >  384 
Marktl,     harvest     ceremonies     in     the 

neighbourhood  of,  ii.  16,  17 
Marquesas  Islands,  men  deified  in  their 

life-time  in  the,  i.  37,  38  ;  the  Mar- 

quesans  and  the  soul,  i.  123  ;  shaving 

of  the  head  in  the,  i.  195 
Mars,    chariot   race  on  the  field  of,  ii. 

64-66 

the  old,  ii.  208-210 

Marseilles,  human  scapegoat  in,  ii.  212 
Masuren,  midsummer  fire  festival  in,  ii. 

265,  266 
May  bride,  i.  98 

Day  carols,  i.  75>  7^ 

Day  customs,  i.  72-86,  88,  89,  94, 

95,  9S-101  ;  ii.    181,   182,  254,  255, 

257,  258 _ 

king,  i.  90,  91 

poles,  i.  78  sq.,  230,  308  ;  ii.  66 

• queen,  i.  93,  94 

sleeping  bridegroom  of,  i.  95 

trees,  i.   74-82,  90,  91,  243,  247, 

268,  269  ;  ii.  8,  251 
Mayenne,  May  Day  custom  in,  i.  76 
Mecklenburg,    reaping    custom    in,    i. 

376 
Meiningen,  Ash  Wednesday  custom  in, 

ii.  29  ;  sowing  time  custom,  ii.  48 
Melanesia,  sunshine  making  in,  i.  24  ; 

bringing   back   the   soul   in,   i.    136  ; 

Melanesian     stones     and     a     man's 

shadow,  i.  142 
Meleager,  ii.  305 
Men  eaten  to  obtain  their  qualities,  ii. 

88,  89 
Menstruation,    seclusion   of  women    at 

periods  of,  ii.  238-242 
Menstruous  blood,  primitive  dread  of, 

ii.  238,  241 
Mentawej    Islands,   precautions  against 

strangers  in  the,  i.  152 


Meroe,    Ethiopian   kings  of,    killed,    i. 

218 
Metz,  midsummer  fires  in,  ii.  283 
Mexican  sacraments,    paste    images    of 

the  god  eaten,  ii.  79-82  ;  festivals,  ii. 

80-84 
Mexico,   oath  of  kings  at  accession  in, 

i.  49  ;  sacrifice  of  new-born  babes  in, 

i.    307 :    human  sacrifice  at  harvest 

festival  in,   i.    381  ;    incarnate   gods 

slain  in,  ii.  218-222 
Miaotse,  ceremony  of  driving  away  the 

devil  by  the,  ii.  151 
Mice,  charm  for  ridding  lands  from,  ii. 

131 

Mid-Lent  customs,  i.  82,  93,  254,  261- 

263,  268,  269 
Midsummer  customs,  i.  78  sq.,  89,  loi, 

272,  290-294  ;  ii.  366,  367 
European  fire  festivals  at,  ii.  25S- 

267,  282,   283  ;  burning  of  effigies  in 

the  midsummer  fires,  ii.  266,  267 
Eve   superstitions,  ii.    286,    287  ; . 

magic  plants  gathered  on  Midsummer 

Eve,  ii.  286-288 

omens,  i.  294 

Mikado,  description  of  the  life  of  the, 

i.    110-I12;    cooking  of  his  food,  i. 

166,     167 ;    effects    of    wearing    his 

clothes  without  leave,  i.  167  ;  cutting 

his  hair  and  nails,  i.  197  ;  not  allowed 

to  touch  the  ground,  ii.  224,  225 
Miklucho-Maclay,  Baron,  ceremony  on 

his  entering  a  village  on  the  Maclay 

coast,  i.  156 
Milkmen  worshipped  by  the  Todas,  i. 

INIinahassa,  rain-charm  used  by  the,  i. 
17  ;  blood  drinking  at  festivals  by  the, 
i.  35  ;  custom  in  time  of  sickness,  ii. 
84  ;  driving  away  devils  by  the,  ii. 

158,  159 
Mingrelia,  rain-getting  in,  i.  15 
Minnetaree   Indians  and   the  resurrec- 
tion of  the  bison,  ii.  122,  123 
Miris,    tree   superstition   of  the,  i.   63  ; 

tiger's  flesh  eaten  by  the,  ii.  86 
Mirrors,  covering  up  of,  i.  147 
Mistletoe,  the,  worshipped  by  the 
Celts  and  gathered  by  the  Druids,  ii. 
285,  286,  288,  289,  295  ;  gathered  on 
Midsummer  Eve,  ii.  2S6  sq.  ;  qualities 
of,  ii.  289  ;  viewed  as  the  seat  of  life, 
ii.  295  ;  life  of  the  oak  in  the,  ii. 
360,  361  ;  not  allowed  to  touch  the 
ground,  ii.  361  ;  a  protection  against 
witchcraft,  ii.  362 ;  the  Golden 
Bough  the,  ii.  363,  368 ;  reason  it 
was  called  the  Golden  Bough,  ii. 
365  ;  why  called  golden,  ii.  366, 
367 ;    divining  rods   made   from,   in 


INDEX 


399 


Sweden,  ii.  367  ;  gathered  at  mid- 
summer and  Christmas,  ii.  367 

Mithraic  mysteries,  ii.  358 

Mnevis,  the  bull,  ii.  60,  61 

Moa,  expulsion  of  diseases  to  sea  by 
the,  ii.  192 

Mock  executions,  i.  261 

human  sacrifices,  i.  250-253 

Mole,  Le,  i.  5 

Moluccas,  festivals  in  the,  i.  40 ;  treat- 
ment of  clove-trees  in  blossom  in  the, 
i.  60  ;  soul  abduction  in  the,  i.  133, 
134  ;  ceremony  in  the,  after  a  journey, 
i.  158 

Mondard,  the  great,  ii.  40 

Mongolians,  stuffing  the  skin  of  a 
sacrificed  animal  by  the,  ii.  124 

Mongols,  the,  and  the  soul,  i.  128 

Monomotapa,  precautions  taken  for  the 
king  of,  i.  159 

Montalto,  Mid  Lent  custom  in,  i.  262 

Mooris,    custom    at    births    by    the,    ii. 

Moosheim,  fire  festival  at,  ii.  278 
Moqui    Indians,    belief    in    the   trans- 
migration of  human  souls  into  turtles 
held  by  the,  ii.  98,  99  ;  totem  clans 
of  the,  ii.  99 
Moresby,  Captain,  at  Shepherd's  Isle,  i. 

152,  153. 

Morocco,     iron    a    protection    against 

demons  in,  i.  175  ;  ants  eaten  in,  ii. 

87  ;  diverting  evil  spirits  in,  ii.  151 
Mother-cotton,  the,  i.  353 

of  the  maize,  i.  350-352 

Motumotu  theory  of  storms,  i.  27 

— — ,    the  soul  believed   to  be  in   the 

reflection  by  the,  i.  145 
Mowat,  the  chief  of,  supposed  to  have 

power  of  affecting  crops,  etc.,  i.  46  ; 

boys  beaten  to  make  them  grow  in, 

ii.  216 
Mozcas,  weather  kings  of  the,  i.  44 
Muato  Jamwo,  a  capital  offence  to  see 

him  eat,  i.  162 
Mundaris,  sacred  groves  of  the,  i.  (y},  ; 

superstition  concerning  the  felling  of 

sacred  groves,  i.  67  ;  harvest  festival, 

ii.  172 
Mundas,  ceremony  at  the  planting'^of 

the  rice  by  the,  i.  288,  289 
Munster,  rain  fountain  in,  i.  19 
Miinsterland,    Easter   fires  in,   ii.    252, 

253 

Murrain,  cure  for  the,  ii.  191 

Murrams    of  Manipur,    restrictions    of 

food  among  the,  i.  208 
Muyscas,  weather  kings  of  the,  i.  44 

Nagual,  the,  of  the  Indians  of  Guate- 
mala, ii.  333,  334 


Nails,  cutting  the,  i.  195,  196 ;  burying 

the  first  cuttings  of  a  child's,  i.  201  ; 

cuttings  of,  preserv-ed,  i.  202-205 
Namaquas,  foods  eaten  and  rejected  by 

the,  ii.  86 
Nanumea,  precautions  against  strangers 

in  the  island  of,  i.  151 
Narrinyeri   and    their    totems,    i.    165, 

166 
Nass   River,    Indians  of  the,    and    the 

recall  of  the  soul,  i.  140,  141 
Natchez,    harvest    festival    by    the,'  ii. 

382-384 
Nature,  kings  of,  i.  52  ;  dependence  of, 

upon  the  divine  king,  i.  109 
Nauders,  sacred  larch-tree  at,  i.  61,  62 
Naudowessies,       initiatory       ceremony 

amongst  the,  ii.  350 
Navarre,  rain-making  in,  i.  15 
Ndembo,  the,  ii.  345 
Need  fires,  ii.  269,  293 
Negro  idea  of  the  soul,  i.  125 
Nemi,    lake  of,    i.    i  ;  tree   within   the 

sanctuary,    i.    4 ;    priest    of,    i.    249, 

253,    ii.    223 ;    unchanged,    ii.    370, 

371 
Nerechta,  Whitsuntide   customs   in,  i. 

96 
Neuautz,  custom  at  barley  sowing  in,  ii. 

28 
Neuhausen,  harvest  custom  in,  i.  370 
Neusaass,  harvest  custom  in,  i.  337 
New  Britain,  rain-making  in,  i.  13,  14; 

wind  -  charm,    i.    26  ;    driving   away 

evil  in,   ii.    158  ;   expulsion  of  devils 

in,   ii.    203  ;  initiation  ceremony  in, 

ii-  352,  353. 
New  Caledonia,  rain-making  in,  i.  16  ; 

charm  for  making  sunshine  in,  i.  22- 

24 
New  fruits   etc.    eaten    sacramentally, 

ii.  68-79 
New  Guinea,  seclusion  of  girls  in,  ii. 

228,  229 
New  Ireland,  seclusion  of  girls  in,  ii. 

226-228 
New  South  Wales,  ceremony  of  initia- 
tion in,  i.  163  ;  first-born  eaten  in,  i. 

236 
New  Year's  Day  customs,  ii.  170,  171, 

I79>  I93>  194.  272,  273 
New  Zealand,  sacredness  of  blood  in,  i. 

183  ;     superstition     concerning     the 

head,  i.  192  ;  hair  cutting  in,  i.  197, 

199  ;  clippings  from  the  hair  buried 

in,  i.  200  ;  effects  of  sacred  contagion 

in,  ii.  55  ;  gods,  ii.  89 
Nias,   the  people  of,  and   the  soul,  i. 

122,       138;       precautions       against 

strangers  in,  i.  154  ;  succession  in,  i. 

238 ;  slaves  sacrificed  at  the  funeral 


400 


INDEX 


of  a  chief  in,  i.  251  ;  exorcising  the 
devil  in,  ii.  160,  161  ;  scapegoats  in, 
ii.  196,  197 

Nicobar  Islands,  ceremony  in  cases  of 
epidemic  in  the,  ii.  188,  189;  expul- 
sion of  devils  in  the,  ii.  192 

Nightjar,  the,  ii.  334,  335 

Nisus,  King  of  Megara,  ii.  305 

Nootka  Indians,  ceremony  by  the,  at 
the  killing  of  a  bear,  ii.  I13  ;  initia- 
tory ceremony  by  the,  ii.  351 

Nordlingen,  threshing  custom  in,  i.  371 

Norse  stories,  the  external  soul  in,  ii. 
312,  313 

North  American  Indians,  their  idea 
with  regard  to  strangers,  i.  153  ;  re- 
strictions upon  women  at  certain 
times,  i.  170;  cleansing  after  the 
slaying  of  enemies,  i.  170,  171  ;  ab- 
stinence from  blood,  i.  179;  nail 
cutting  amongst  the,  i.  196 ;  belief 
concerning  the  various  properties  of 
food,  ii.  85,  86 ;  spare  the  rattle- 
snake, ii.  no;  ceremony  at  bear 
killing,  ii.  115  ;  respect  for  the  elan, 
deer  and  elk,  ii.  117,  118  ;  regard  for 
the  bones  of  animals,  ii.  125 

Northamptonshire,  May  -  day  custom 
in,  i.  75  ;  cure  for  cough,  ii.  154 

Norway,  cut  hair  and  nails  buried  or 
burned  in,  i.  205  ;  midsummer  bon- 
fires in,  ii.  289 

Niirnberg,  ceremony  of  carrying  out 
Death  in,  i.  259 

Oak  worship,  ii.  291  ;  the  chief  sacred 
tree  of  the  European  Aryans,  ii.  291- 
370 ;  sacred  fires  made  of,  ii.  292  ; 
oak  wood  burnt  on  Midsummer  Day, 
ii.  294  ;  Balder  is  the,  ii.  295  ;  human 
representative  of  the,  slain,  ii.  294- 
296 ;  life  of,  in  the  mistletoe,  ii.  360, 
361  ;  superstition  concerning  the  oak 
tree,  ii.  368  ;  a  store  of  solar  fire,  ii. 

369 
Oats-goat,  ii.  13-15 
Obermedlingen,    threshing   custom    in, 

ii.   21,  22  ;  midsummer    fires    in,    ii. 

270 
Oberpfalz,  threshing  custom  in,  i.  371 
October  horse,  ii.  64-67 
Offerings  of  first-fruits,  ii.  373-3S4 
Oil  of  St.  John,  ii.  288,  289 
Ojebways,  sunshine  charm  used  by  the, 

i.  22  ;  seldom  fell  living  trees,  i.  61 
Olaf,  King  of  Sweden,  sacrificed,  i.  47, 

48 
Old  Calabar,  revellings  at  the  expulsion 

of  devils  in,  ii.  193 
Old   man,    a   name  given   to   the  last 

sheaf,  i.  337,  338 


Old  woman,  a  name  given  to  the  last 
sheaf,  i.  337,  338 

Oldenburg,  superstition  regarding  the 
reflection  in,  i.  147  ;  custom  with 
regard  to  clippings  from  the  hair  in, 
i.  201  ;  fire  festival  in,  ii.  250 

Omaha  Indians,  rain-making  by  the,  i. 
14  ;  wind  clan  of  the  Omahas,  i.  26  ; 
their  totems,  ii.  53,  56 

Omens,  neutralising  bad,  ii.  151 

Onitsha,  ceremony  of  eating  the  new 
yams  at,  ii.  74  ;  New  Year  festival  in, 
ii.  170,  171  ;  human  scapegoats  in, 
ii.  195,  196 

Oraon  festival,  i.  85,  86 

Oraons,  ceremony  at  rice  planting  by 
the,  i.  288 

Orchomenus,  human  sacrifice  at  the  rites 
of  Dionysus  in,  i.  329 

Oregon,  belief  in  the  recall  of  the  soul 
by  the  Salish  Indians  of,  i.  136,  137 

Orestes,  the  originator  of  the  worship 
of  Diana,  i.  3 

Orinoco  rain-charm,  i.  18,  93  ;  sunshine 
charm,  i.  22 

Orissa,  worshippers  of  the  Queen  of 
England  in,  i.  41  ;  rice  growing  in, 
i.  61 

Orkney  Islands,  transference  of  sick- 
ness in  the,  ii.  153 

Osiris,  myth  of,  i.  301  sq.  ;  ritual  of,  i. 
303-305  ;  representation  of  the  dead 
body  of,  in  the  temple  of  Isis,  i.  305  ; 
a  corn-spirit,  i.  305  -  307  ;  a  tree- 
spirit,  i.  307-309  ;  grave  of,  at  Philae, 
i.  309  ;  arguments  for  and  against  his 
being  the  sun-god,  i.  31 1-3 13,  316, 
317,  318,  320;  a  god  of  vegetation, 
i.  319  ;  rites  of,  similar  to  those  of 
Dionysus  and  Adonis,  i.  319,  320 ; 
probable  origin  of  the  cult  of,  i.  363  ; 
once  represented  by  a  human  victim, 
i.  400-404  ;  on  monuments,  i.  403  ; 
key  to  the  mysteries  of,  i.  404  ;  as  a 
pig,  ii.  52-60  ;  death  of,  ii.  58,  59  ; 
annual  sacrifice  of  a  pig  to,  ii.  58,  59  ; 
as  a  bull,  ii.  59-61 

Osnabriick,  harvest  custom  in,  i.  336 

Osterode,  Easter  fires  in,  ii.  253 

Ostiaks,  ceremony  by  the,  at  the  killing 
of  a  bear,  ii.  in,  112 

Ot  Damons,  custom  with  regard  to 
strangers  by  the,  i.  151,  152;  seclu- 
sion of  girls  amongst  the,  ii.  229 

Otawa  Indians,  ceremony  at  the  killing 
of  a  bear  by  the,  ii.  113  ;  do  not  burn 
fish  bones,  ii.  119 

Oude,  sin  eating  in,  ii.  156 

Owl,  the,  ii.  335,  336 

Ox,  ritual  at  the  Athenian  sacrifice  of 
the,   ii.    38,   39,  41  ;  as  an  embodi- 


INDEX 


401 


ment  of  the   corn-spirit,   ii.    41-43; 
Osiris  and  the,  ii.  59-6l 
Ozieri,  Gardens  of  Adonis  at,  i.  290 

Pacific,  human  gods  in  the,  i.  38,  39 
Padams  of  Assam,  superstition  concern- 
ing lost  children  by  the,  i.  63 
Palermo,  "sawing  the  old  woman "  in, 

i.  261 
Palm-tree,  the  Dyaks  and  the,  ii.  329 

Sunday  custom,  ii.  216 

Pan,  representation  of,  ii.   34,  35  ;  the 

Lord  of  the  Wood,  ii.  35 
Panes,  festival  of  the,  ii.  90,  91 
Papuans,   foods  eaten    by   the,   ii.    87  ; 

belief  in  a  child's  life  being  bound  up 

with  that  of  a  tree,  ii.  329 
Paris,  procession  of  mock  giant  in,  ii. 

281 
Parthian      monarchs     worshipped      as 

deities,  i.  49 
Patagonians,  burning  of  loose  hair  by 

the,  i.  205 
Pawnees,    human  sacrifices  by  the,   at 

sowing,  i.  381,  382 
Payaguas,  method  of  fighting  the  wind 

by  the,  i.  28 
Pear-tree,  the  protector  of  cattle,  i.  73 
Pelew  Islanders,  god  of  the,  i.  39,  40 ; 

custom  at  tree-felling  by  the,  i.  62,  63  ; 

ceremony  on  the  killing  of  a  man  by 

the,  i.  178 
Pembrokeshire,  Twelfth  Day  custom  in, 

ii.  143 
Pepper  Coast,  high  priest  held  respon- 

sil)le  for  the  general  welfare,  i.  47 
Permanent  incarnation,  i.  37-42 
Persian  kings  not  seen  eating,  i.  162 
Peru,  rain-charm  in,  i.   17  ;    charm  for 

staying  the  sun  in,  i.  24  ;  preservation 

of  the  representative  corn -spirit  by 

the  ancient   Peruvians,  i.   350,   351  ; 

expulsion  of  devils  in,  ii.  203  ;  self- 
beating  in,  ii.  216.     See  also  imdei- 

Incas. 
Philippine  Islands,  belief  in  the  souls  of 

trees  in   the,   i.    62  ;    cannibalism  in 

the,  ii.  88 
Philosophy,  primitive,  defect  of,  i.  210- 

212;  rules  of  life  of  sacred  men  are 

the  outcome  of,  il>. 
Phoenician  custom  at  vintage,  i.  365  ; 

Linus  song,  i.  398,  399 
Phrygia,  mock  human   sacrifices  in,  i. 

300  ;  reapers'  song  in,  i.  365,  366 
Piedmont,  midsummer  peasant  custom 

in,  i.  288 
Pig,    the    corn -spirit    as  a,   ii.    26-31; 

sacred,  ii.  50-57  ;  Osiris  as  a,  ii.  52- 

60 
Pigs,   Demeter   and    Proserpine  as,  ii. 

VOL.   II 


44-49 ;  Attis  and  Adonis  as,  ii.  49, 
50 
Pilsen,  Whitsuntide  custom  near,  i.  92 
Pine-tree  sacred  to  Dionysus,  i.  321 
Pinsk,     Whit      Monday     customs     by 

Russian  girls  in,  i.  87,  88 
Plas,  Whitsuntide  custom  in  the  neigh- 
bourhood of,  i.  92 
Po,  excavations  in  the  valley  of  the,  i. 

57 
Poachers  and  the  fir-cones,  ii.  288 
Point  Barrow,  hunting  the  evil  spirit  by 

the  Eskimo  of,  ii.  164,  165 
Poitou,  midsummer  fire  festival  in,  ii. 

261 
Poland,  ceremony  of  carrying  out  Death 

in,  i.  261  ;  harvest  custom  in,  i.  339, 

340,  342,  343 ;  Christmas  custom  in, 

ii.  6,  7 
Polynesians,   superstition  held  by  the, 

concerning   the   head,    i.    189,    190 ; 

and  sacred  contagion,  ii.  55 
Pomerania,  cut  hair  buried  in,  i.  205  ; 

reaping  custom  in,  i.  205 
Pomos     of    California,    expulsions    of 

devils  by  the,  ii.  183 
Pongol  festival,  ii.  73 
Pont  a  Mousson,  harvest  ceremony  at, 

ii.  21 
Poplar,    burning  of  a,   on  St.    Peter's 

Day,  i.  lOl 
Portrait,  the  soul  in  the,  i.  I48,  149 
Portraits,  life  in,  i.  148 
Potato-dog,  ii.  4 

wolf,  ii.  2,  5 

Potatoes,  custom  at  the  digging  of  new, 

in  Sutherlandshire,  ii.  Ji 
Potniae,  rites  of  Dionysus  at,  i.  329 
Pouilly,  harvest  ceremony  at,  ii.  20,  21, 

47 
Preacher  to  the  fish,  ii.  1 19,  120 
Pregnancy,  i.  239 
Priestly  kings,  i.  "J,  8 
Priests,  Roman  and  iSabine,  not  shaved 

with  iron  razors,  i.  172 
Primitive  man  and  the  supernatural,  i. 

6-30 
philosophy,  rules  of  life  are  the 

outcome  of,  i.  208-210 
Prophesying,  drinking  blood  before,  i. 

34,  35 
Propitiation  of  the  fish,  ii.  1 18,  1 19 
Proserpine  and  the  pig,  ii.  44-49 
Prussia,  reverence  for  the  oak  in,  i.  58  ; 
high  trees  worshipped  by  the  ancient 
Prussians,    i.     64 ;     custom    after    a 
funeral  by  the  old  Prussians,  i.  177  5 
self-immolation  of  the  supreme  ruler 
of  the   old   Prussians,   i.    223  ;    cere- 
mony at  spring  ploughing  in,  i.  286  ; 
corn  drenching  in,  i.  287  ;  gardens  of 

2  D 


402 


INDEX 


Adonis  in,  i.  294,  295 ;  harvest 
custom  in,  i.  336,  338,  343  ;  ceremony 
at  the  sowing  of  the  winter  corn  by 
the  Prussian  Slavs,  ii.  18,  19  ;  mid- 
summer fire  festival  in,  ii.  265 

Puberty,  girls  at,  not  allowed  to  touch 
the  ground  or  see  the  sun,  ii.  225- 
253 ;  girls  secluded  at,  ii.  225 ; 
reasons  for  the  seclusion,  ii.  238  sq. 

Pulverbatch,  oak  tree  superstition  at, 
ii.  368 

Punjaub,  Gen.  Nicholson  worshipped 
by  a  sect  in  the,  i.  41 ;  ceremony  at  the 
bursting  of  the  cotton  boles  in  the,  i. 
353  ;  custom  at  the  festival  of  lamps, 
ii.  176 

Purification  after  travel,  i.  157,  158 

Pyrenees,  customs  in  the,  i.  loi 

QuAUHTiTLANS,   human   sacrifices   by 

the,  ii.  221 
Queen  of  the  sacred  rites,  i.  7 
Queensland,  initiatory  rites  in,  ii.  343, 

344 
Quilacare,  self-immolation  of  the  king  of, 

i.  224 
Quoja,  initiatory  rites  in,  ii.  347 

Ra,  the  sun-god,  i.  313-316 
Rain-charm,  i.  93,  199,  287,  289,  299, 

m^  374,  390,  400 ;  ii.  42 

kings  of,  i.  52,  53 

making,  i.  13-22 

Rajah,    custom   at   the   death  of  a,   i. 

232 
Rajah  Vijyanagram,  his  aversion  to  iron, 

i.  174 
Rajamahall,  offerings  of  first-fruits  in, 

ii-  374,  375 
Rali  fair,  the,  i.  276,  277 
Ram,  sacred,  ii.  63  ;  Egyptian  sacrifice 
of  the,  ii.  92-94  ;  consecration  of  the 
white  ram  by  the  Kalmucks,  ii.  136 
Ramin,  harvest  custom  in,  i.  377 
Raskolniks,  the,  and  mirrors,  i.  147 
Rattlesnake  not  killed,  ii.  1 10 
Ratzeburg,   harvest  custom  in,  i.  376, 

377 
Red  cock,  ii.  9 

haired  victims,  i.  306,  307 

Reflection,  the  soul  in  the,  i.  145-148 
Religion,  marks  of  a  primitive,  i.  348, 

349 

and  magic,  relation  of,  i.  30-32 

Religious  aspect  of  Peruvian,  Parthian 

and  Egyptian  sovereigns,  i.  48-50 
Resurrection,  the,  of  animals,  ii.  123- 
125  ;  traces  in  folk-tales  of  the  belief 
in,  ii.  125  ;  simulation  of  death  and 
resurrection  at  initiatory  rites,  ii. 
342-358 


Rhetra,  priest  tastes  the  sacrificial  blood 
at,  i.  35 

Rhon  mountains,  fire  festivals  in  the,  ii. 
249 

Rice-bride,  the,  i.  355 

Rice  harvest,  ceremonies  at  the,  ii.  71, 
.72 

Rio  de  la  Plata,  seclusion  of  girls 
amongst  the  Indians  of,  ii.  230,  231 

Roman  cure  for  fever,  ii.  152 

haircutting  custom,  i.  199 

Romans,  tree  worship  by  the,  i.  99 

Rome,  ceremony  of  driving  out  the  old 
Mars  from,  ii.  208-210 

Remove,  sacred  oak  at,  i.  58,  64 

Rook,  expulsion  of  evil  in  the  island  of, 
ii.  158;  initiation  festival,  ii.  352 

Rosenheim,  harvest  custom  in,  ii.  20 

Roti,  haircutting  ceremony  in  the 
island  of,  i.  201,  205,  206 

Rottenburg,  midsummer  ceremony  in, 
ii.  266,  267 

Roumanians,  rain-making  by  the,  i.  16; 
custom  after  a  death  by  the,  i.  176; 
corn-drenching  by  the,  i.  286 

Rowan,  the,  effective  against  witch- 
craft, ii.  361 

Royal  and  priestly  taboos,  i.  109-120, 
149-209 

blood  not  spilt  upon  the  ground, 

i.  179-183 

Ruhla,  springtide  custom  in,  i.  88 

Rupture,  cure  for,  ii.  330 

Russia,  Whitsuntide  customs  in,  i.  76, 
77  ;  first  -  born  sacrificed  by  the 
heathen  in,  i.  237 ;  Eastertide 
customs  in  Little  Russia,  i.  272,  273  ; 
harvest  custom  in,  i.  341  ;  ceremony 
on  the  cutting  of  the  first  sheaf  in,  i. 
364  ;  Easter  custom  in  White  Russia, 
ii.  29  ;  Russian  wood-spirits,  ii.  35, 
36 ;  Russian  corn  -  spirits,  ii.  36  ; 
beating  as  a  charm  in,  ii.  216;  mid- 
summer customs  in,  ii.  265,  267 

Ruthenia,  fire  festival  in,  ii.  265 

Rye-boar,  ii.  26,  27 

goat,  ii.  12 

wolf,  ii.  1-3,  5 

Sabaea,  kings  of,  not  allowed  out  of 

their  palaces,  i.  164 
Sabarios,  festival  of,  ii.  69 
Sables,    superstition   about   killing,    ii. 

"5 

Sacaea  festival  at  Babylon,  i.  226,  400 
Sacramental  bread,  traces  of  the  use  of, 
at  Aricia,  ii.  82-84 

character  of  the  harvest   supper, 

corn-spirit  eaten  in  animal  form,  ii.  31 

killing  of  an  animal,  two  types  of 

the,  ii.  134  sq. 


INDEX 


403 


Sacramental  killing  of  sacred  animal  by 
pastoral  peoples,  ii.  1 35- 138 

Sacraments  in  ancient  Mexico,  ii.  78,  79 

Sacred  cattle  in  Egypt,  ii.  60,  61 

persons'  vessels    not    to    be  used 

by  others,  i.  166  ;  sacred  persons  are 
dangerous,  i.  166,  167  :  not  allowed 
to  see  the  sun,  ii.  225,  243  note  ;  not 
allowed  to  touch  the  ground,  ii.  224, 
243  note 

Sacredness  and  uncleanness  not  dis- 
tinguished by  primitive  man,  i.  169- 
172 

Sacrifices,  human,  i.  235-237,  251,  252 

Sacrificial  king,  i.  7 

Saddle  Island,  the  reflection  and  the 
soul  in  the,  i.  145 

Saffron  Walden,  May- day  custom  in, 
i.  76 

Sagar,  influenza  in,  ii.  189,  190 

Saligne,  harvest  custom  in,  i.  343 

Salii,  the,  ii.  210  note 

Salmon-catching,  ii.  121,  122 

Salza  district.  Shrove  Tuesday  custom 
in  the,  ii.  29 

Salzwedel,  Whitsuntide  custom  in,  i.  90 

Samoan  gods,  i.  39 ;  ii.  54 

Samoans,  the,  and  bleeding  trees,  i.  61; 
recall  of  the  soul  amongst  the,  i.  135  ; 
turtle  not  eaten  by  the,  i.  163  ; 
Samoans  and  the  butterfly,  ii.  56  ; 
presentation  of  first-fruits  by  the,  ii. 

Samogitians,  tree  superstition  amongst 
the,  i.   65  ;    birds  and  beasts  of  the 
wood  held  sacred  by  the,  i.  105 
Samorin  kings,  i.  225 
Samoyed  story,  the  external  soul  in  a, 

ii.  321 
Sankara  and  his  shadow,  i.  142 
Santals,  story  of  a  soul  by  the,  i.  126 
Sardinia,  Gardens  of  Adonis  in,  i.  290 
Satyrs,  representation  of  the,  ii.  35 
Savage,  our  debt  to  the,  i.  210-212 
Savage  Island,  kings  killed  in  the,  i.  48; 
collapse   of  the  monarchy  in  the,  i. 
118;   killing  of  strangers  in  the,  i. 
158 
Savages  and  the  soul,  i.  121,  122 
"Sawing  the  old  woman,"  i.  261,  262 
Saxon  villages,  Whitsuntide  custom  in, 

i-  95 

Saxons  of  Transylvania,  charm  for  keep- 
ing sparrows  from  the  corn  used  by 
the,  ii.  130 

Saxony,  Whitsuntide  ceremonies  in,  i. 

Scandinavian  Christmas  custom,  ii.  29 
Scapegoat,    ii.    182 -21 7  ;    animal    em- 
ployed   as   a,   ii.    189- 191,    194  sq.  ; 
human,  ii.   191  sq.  ;  dog  used  as  a. 


ii.  194,  195  ;  Tibetan  ceremony  of 
the,  ii.  197,  198;  divine,  ii.  199-201, 
205  ;  cow  and  bull  as,  ii.  201,  202  ; 
use  of,  in  classical  antiquity,  ii.  208- 
217  ;  reason  for  beating  the,  ii.  213- 

215 
Schaumburg,  Easter  fires  in,  ii.  253 
Schluckenau,  Shrovetide  custom  in,  i. 

244 
Scotland,  representation  of  spring  in  the 

Highlands  of,  i.  97  ;  iron  as  a  charm 

in,  i.    175,  176;    harvest   custom  in, 

'•     339i    345  '■>    cowherd    clothed    in 

cow's  hide  in  the  Highlands  of,   ii. 

145,    146 ;    midsummer    fires   in,    ii. 

264,  265 
Scythian  kings  put  in  bonds  in  times  of 

scarcity,  i.  46 
Sea-lion,  respect  for  the,  ii.  Ill 
Seal,  respect  for  the,  ii.  Ill 
Self-immolation,  i.  216,  224 
Semites,  sacrifice    of  children    by  the, 

i.  235  ;   the  king's  son  sacrificed,  ih. ; 

worship  of  Adonis,  i.  279 
Senegambia,  the  Python  clan  in,  ii.  95  ; 

soul  detention  among  the  Sereres  of, 

^-  '39 
Senjero,  first-born  sacrificed  in,  i.  236, 

237 
Servia,   rain-making  in,  i.    16;   torch- 
light procession  in,  ii.  266 
Seven  Oaks,  May-day  custom  in,  i.  76 
Sex-totems  in  Australia,  ii.  334-337 
Shadow,  the  soul  in  the,  i.  141 -149 
Shamans,  the,  sacrifice    their  chief  on 

account  of  pestilence,  i.  48 
Shans,  expulsion    of  the    fire-spirit  by 

the,  ii.  178,  179 
Shark   Point  the  home  of  the  priestly 

King  Kukulu,  i.  112 
Sharp  instruments  supposed  to  wound 

spirits,  i.  176,  177 
Sheaf,  the  last,  various  names  given  to, 

and  ceremonies  in  connection  with, 

i-  336-338,  340-346,  408  ;  ii.  4,  7,  8, 

68 
Shepherd's     Isle,     precautions     taken 

against  strangers  in,  i.  152,  153 
Shetland  seamen  and  wind  buying,  i. 

27 

Shropshire,  "  Neck  "  the  name  given  to 
the  last  handful  of  corn  in,  i.  407, 
408  ;  harvest  custom,  ii.  24,  25  ;  sin- 
eating  in,  ii.  155 

Shrovetide  Bear,  i.  254,  255 

customs,  i.   96,   244,  270  ;  ii.  29, 

250,  254-257,  283 

Siam,  soul  superstition  in,  i.  59  ;  mode 
of  royal  executions  in,  i.  179,  180; 
superstition  concerning  the  head,  i. 
187,  188  ;  temporary  king  of,  i.  229  ; 


404 


INDEX 


banishment  of  demons  in,  ii.  178; 
human  scapegoats  in,  ii.  196 ;  the 
external   soul   in   Siamese   story,    ii. 

304,  30s 

Siberian  sable  hunters,  ii.  1 1 5,  1 16 

Sicily,  Gardens  of  Adonis  in,  i.  294, 
.295 

Silenus  both  a  wood  and  corn  spirit,  ii. 
35  ;  representation  of,  ib. 

Silesia,  driving  out  Death  in,  i.  260 ; 
"carrying  out  Death"  in,  i.  267; 
bringing  back  summer  in,  i.  263 ;  har- 
vest custom  in,  i.  336,  346  ;  ii.  8 

Silvanus  both  a  wood  and  corn  spirit, 

."•  35 

Sin-bearers,  ii.  151,  152 

Sin-eating,  ii.  154-157 

"  Sinew  which  shrank,"  abstinence  from 
the,  ii.  126-128 

Skye,  harvest  festival  in,  ii.  14  ;  Beltane 
fires  in,  ii.  255,  256 

Slaves  sacrificed,  i.  251,  252 

Slavonia,  "carrying  out  Death"  in,  i. 
260  ;  ii.  209  ;  custom  of  ' '  sawing  the 
old  woman "  amongst  the  Slavs,  i. 
262 ;  reaping  custom  amongst  the 
Slavs,  i.  334,  355 ;  beating  in,  ii. 
216 ;  midsummer  fires  in,  ii.  265  ; 
perpetual  fire  of  the  Slavs,  ii.  293  ; 
the  external  soul  in  Slavonic  stories, 
ii.  309,  310 

Slovenes  of  Oberkrain,  Shrove  Tuesday 
custom  amongst  the,  i.  96 

Small-pox,  driving  away  the,  ii.  161  ; 
scapegoat  used  for,  ii.  190,  191 

Snake,  communion  with  the,  ii.  139 

tribe,  ii.  95  ;  ceremony  performed 

with  a  dough  snake  by  the,  ii.  139, 
140 

Soest,  custom  of  flax  pullers  at,  i.  375 

Sofala,  kings  of,  killed,  i.  219,  220 

Sogamoso,  restrictions  on  the  heir  to 
the  throne  in,  ii.  225 

Solor,  harvest  custom  in,  i.  375 

Somersetshire,  midsummer  fires  in,  ii. 
262 

Sorcerers,  the  soul  extracted  or  detained 
by,  i.  1 35- 141 

Soul,  perils  ot  the,  i.  109  sq.  ;  a  minia- 
ture of  the  body,  i.  121-123  ;  precau- 
tions to  prevent  its  escape,  i.  123  ; 
conceived  as  a  bird,  i.  124  ;  its  flight, 
i.  124,  125  ;  absent  in  sleep,  i.  125- 
129  ;  its  departure  not  always  volun- 
tary, i.  129;  carried  oft"  by  ghosts, 
i.  129-132;  recall  of  the,  i.  129-141  ; 
stolen  by  demons,  i.  132-135  ;  brought 
back  in  visible  shape,  i.  136-138; 
extracted  or  detained  by  sorcerers, 
i.  1 38- 14 1  ;  transference  of  the,  i. 
140  ;  the  soul  thought  to  be  in  the 


portrait,  i.  148,  149  ;  in  the  shadow, 
i.  141-149;  in  the  reflection,  i.  145- 
148;  in  the  blood,  i.  178,  179; 
transmigration  of  the  human  soul  into 
that  of  a  turtle,  ii.  98  ;  the  external 
soul  in  folk  tales,  ii.  296-326  ;  in  folk 
custom,  ii.  327-359 

Souls,  of  trees,  i.  59-61  ;  of  divine  per- 
sons transmitted  to  successors,  i.  237- 
239  ;  plurality  of,  ii.  339 

South  American  Indians,  foods  eaten 
and  avoided  by  the,  ii.  86  ;  beating 
by  the,  ii.  216 

South  Sea  Islands,  man-gods  in  the,  i. 
38,  39 . 

Sowing-time  custom,  ii.  28-30,  32,  48 

Spachendorf,  fire  festivals  in,  ii.  249, 
250 

Spain,  custom  of  "sawing  the  old 
woman  "  in,  i.  261,  262  ;  midsummer 
fires  in,  ii.  266 

Sparrows,  the,  and  the  corn,  ii.  130 

Sparta,  state  sacrifices  offered  by  the 
kings  of,  i.  7 

Spices,    sprinkling    the    sick   with,    i. 

'54 

Spirit,  of  vegetation,  in  human  shape,  i. 
87,  88 

robbing  the,  i.  380 

Spirits,  sharp  instruments  supposed  to 
wound,  i.  176,  177 

Spitting  as  a  protective  charm,  i.  205 

Spring  and  harvest  customs  compared, 
i.  346,  347 

ceremony  in,  in  China,  ii.  42,  43  ; 

European  fire  festivals  in,  ii.  247-254 

.Storms,  Motumotu  theory  of,  i.  27 

Strangers,  precautions  against  the 
magic  arts  of,  i.  150-160 ;  tied  up  in 
the  sheaves  by  the  reapers  as  repre- 
sentatives of  the  corn-spirit,  i.  374- 
380 

Straw  goats,  ii.  16 

Sucla-Tirtha,  expulsion  of  sins  to  sea 
by  the,  ii.  192 

Suicide  of  Fijians  at  old  age,  i.  216 

Sumatra,  rain-charm  in,  i.  17  ;  tree- 
superstition  in,  i.  63 ;  reluctance 
to  wound  a  tiger  in,  ii.  no 

Summer,  bringing  back,  i.  263,  268 

tree,  i.  268,  269 

Sun,  staying  the,  i.  24  ;  sacred  person 
not  allowed  to  see  the,  ii.  225,  243 
7iote  ;  girls  at  puberty  not  allowed  to 
see  the,  ii.  225-253  ;  traces  in  folk- 
tales of  the  rule  which  forbids  girls  at 
puberty  to  see  the  sun,  ii.  235-237  ; 
belief  that  the  sun  can  impregnate 
women,  ii.  236 ;  tabooed  persons 
may  not  see  the,  ii.  243  note ;  fires 
as  sun  charms,  ii.  267-274 


INDEX 


405 


Suni  Mohammedans,  covering  up 
mirrors  by  the,  i.  147 

Sunshine,  making,  i.  22-24 

Superb  warbler,  ii.  336,  337 

Surenthal,  midsummer  fire  ceremony 
in  the,  ii.  259,  260 

Surinam,  the  bush  negroes  of,  and  their 
totems,  ii.  53,  54 

Sutherland,  cure  for  cough  in,  ii.  154 

Sutherlandshire,  custom  at  the  digging 
of  new  potatoes  in,  ii.  71 

Swabia,  burying  of  cut  hair  in,  i.  202  ; 
burying  the  carnival  in,  i.  254-257  ; 
harvest  custom,  ii.  27  ;  fire  festival, 
ii.  248-249  ;  Easter  fires  in,  ii.  254  ; 
midsummer  fires  in,  ii.  258 

Sweden,  harvest  superstition  in,  i.  68  ; 
King  Domalde  sacrificed  on  account 
of  famine,  i.  47,  48 ;  May  Eve 
customs  in,  i.  78  ;  midsummer  cere- 
monies, i.  78,  79  ;  Christmas  customs 
in,  ii.  29-31  ;  superstitious  use  of  Yule 
straw  in,  ii.  30,  31 ;  May  Day  fires  in, 
ii.  258  ;  midsummer  bonfires  in,  ii. 
289  ;  mistletoe  superstition  in,  ib.  ; 
divining  rods  made  from  the  mistletoe 
in,  ii.  367 

Swineherds,  restrictions  on,  in  Egypt, 
ii.  52 

.Syleus,  legend  of,  i.  398 

Sympathetic  eating.  Savage  belief  that 
a  man  acquires  the  character  of  the 
animal  or  man  whose  flesh  he  eats, 
ii.  85-89 

magic,  i.  9- 1 2 

Syria,  caterpillars  in,  ii.  132 

Taboo,  i.  121,  178;  fatal  effects  of,  i. 
167-170;  seclusion  of  tabooed  persons, 
i.  170,  171  ;  the  object  of,  is  to  pre- 
serve life,  i.  149  ;  royal  and  priestly 
taboos,  i.  109-120,  149-150,  209 

Tabor,  in  Bohemia,  ceremony  of  carrying 
out  Death  in,  i.  258 

Tahiti,  abdication  of  kings  of,  i.  120; 
the  bodies  of  the  king  and  queen  not 
allowed  to  be  touched,  i.  172  ;  super- 
stition concerning  the  head  in,  i.  190, 
191  ;  burying  of  cut  hair  in,  i.  200 

Taif,  hair  cut  on  returning  from  a 
journey  in,  i.  194 

Tamaniu,   the,  of  the  Bank  Islanders, 

ii-  33 1  >  332 

Tana,  disposal  of  unconsumed  food  by 
the  islanders,  i.  166;  offerings  of  first- 
fruits  in,  ii.  378 

Tarnow,  reaping  custom  in,  i.  335 

Tartar  Khan,  ceremony  on  a  visit  by  a 
stranger  to  a,  i.  158,  159 

poems,    the  external  soul  in,  ii. 

321-324 


Ta-ta-thi  tribe  of  New   South  Wales, 

rain-making  by  the,  i.  14 
Ta-uz,    festival   in    honour    of,   i.    283, 

284 
Temporary  kings,  i.   228  -  234  ;    some- 
times hereditary,  i.  22S,  232 
Tenedos,  rites  of  Dionysus  at,  i.  329 
Tenimber  Islands,  offering  of  first-fruits 

in  the,  ii.  376,  377 
Teutonic  kings  exercised  the  powers  of 

high  priests,  i.  8 
Texas,  initiatory  ceremony  among  the 

Toukaway  Indians  of,  ii.  352 
Thammuz  as  a  corn-spirit,  i.  283,  288 
Thann,  May-Day  customs  in,  i.  83 
Theban  ritual,  ii.  92,  93  ;  rams  sacred 

at  Thelies,  ii.  63 
Thesmophoria,  the,  ii.  44-48 
Thlinket    of    Alaska,    festival    to   the 

halibut  by  the,  ii.  1 21 
Thiiringen,   Whitsuntide  customs  in,  i. 

90,  91,  243  ;  Mid-Lent  customs  in,  i. 

257,  258  ;  threshing  custom  in,  i.  371 
Tibetan    New    Year's   day   custom,    ii. 

I93-I95  ;  scapegoat,  ii.  197-198 
Tiger,  flesh  of,  eaten,  ii.  86  ;  reluctance 

to  wound  a,  ii.  no 
Tikopia  islanders,  ceremony  by  the,  in 

cases  of  epidemic,  ii.  188 
Tillot,  threshing  custom  in  the  canton 

of,  i.  372 
Timor,  West,  custom  of  a  speaker  in,  i. 

.163 

Timorese  rain-charm,  i.  18 

Timorlaut,  married  men  not  allowed  to 
cut  their  hair  in,  i.  194 ;  disease- 
boats  in,  ii.  186,  187 

Tjumba,  harvest  festival  in,  ii.  375, 
376 

Todas,  the  dairy  a  sanctuary  amongst 
the,  i.  41  ;  buffalo  held  sacred  by 
the,  ii.  136,  137 

Tom-cat,  ii.  Ii 

Tona,  the,  of  the  Zapotecs,  ii.  332,  333 

Tonga,  king  of,  not  seen  eating,  i.  162  ; 
ceremony  in,  with  regard  to  sacred 
contagion,  ii.  55  ;  festival  of  the  first- 
fruits  in,  ii.  379-381 

Tongues  of  birds  given  to  backward 
children  to  eat,  ii.  87 

Tonquin,  the  test  of  a  suitable  sacrifi- 
cial victim  in,  i.  36 ;  selection  of 
guardian  spirits  in,  i.  40 ;  the  mon- 
archy, i.  119,  120  ;  kings  not  allowed 
to  be  viewed  in  public,  i.  165  ;  mode 
of  royal  executions  in,  i.  180,  181  ; 
expulsionof  evil  spirits  in,  ii.  176-178; 
time  of  licence  in,  ii.  204 

Toothache  cure,  ii.  149 

Torchlight  processions,  ii.  266,  273 

Totem,  a,  is  an  object  (animal,  plant. 


4o6 


INDEX 


etc. )  in  which  a  man  deposits  his  soul 
for  safety,  ii.  337-342 

Totemism,  ii.  38,  53,  54,  56,  133,  337- 
342,  358,  359 

Totems,  sex,  ii.  334 

Touaregs  of  the  Sahara,  custom  of  veil- 
ing the  face  amongst  the,  i.  163 

Transmigration  of  divine  spirit,  i.  42-44 

Transylvania,  rain-charm  in,  i.  17  ; 
burying  the  carnival  amongst  the 
Saxons  of,  i.  255;  "carrying  out 
Death  "  in,  i.  265,  266  ;  corn-drench- 
ing in,  i.  286  ;  custom  for  preserving 
the  crops  from  insects,  etc.  in,  ii.  130 

Transylvanian  story  of  a  soul,  i.  126,  127 

Traunstein  district,  harvest  custom  in 
the,  ii.  27 

Travancore,  transference  of  sickness  in, 
ii.  151 

Travel,  purification  after,  i.  157,  158 

Tree-spirit  represented  by  leaf-clad  per- 
sons alone,  i.  87-90  ;  killing  the,  i. 
240-253  ;  reason  for  annually  killing 
the,  i.  247-249  ;  the  goat  as  an  em- 
bodiment of  the,  ii.  34-37  ;  burnt  in 
effigy,  ii.  274-277 ;  human  beings 
burnt  as  representatives  of  the,  ii. 
277-285 

spirits  give  rain  and  sunshine,  i. 

66 ;  cause  the  crops  to  grow,  i.  67- 
70 ;  influence  of,  on  women  and 
cattle,  i.  70-74 

worship,    i.    56-9S  ;    in  antiquity, 

98-108 

Trees,  bleeding,  i.  61  ;  souls  of,  i.  59- 
61  ;  souls  of  the  dead  believed  to 
animate,  i.  62  ;  inhabited  by  spirits, 
i.  62-65  ;  planted  at  the  births  of 
children,  ii.  329,  330 ;  regarded  as 
storehouses  of  the  sun's  fire,  ii.  369 
sq. 

— —  and  cattle,  i.  72  sq. 

Trier,  harvest  custom  in,  ii.  6 

Tukaitawa  and  his  shadow,  i.  142,  143 

Turks,  parings  from  the  nails  preserved 
by  the,  i.  204 ;  Turks  of  Central 
Asia  give  backward  children  tongues 
of  birds  to  eat,  ii.  87 

Turner's  picture  of  the  Golden  Bough, 
i.  I 

Turtle,  the,  not  eaten,  i.  163  ;  sacrifice 
of  the  sacred,  ii.  95-99  ;  belief  in  the 
transmigration  of  human  souls  into, 
ii.  98,  99 

Twelfth  Day  customs,  ii.  143,  144,  182 

Tycoons,  the,  i.   1 19 

Types,  two,  of  animal  worship,  ii.  133, 

134 

Typhon,  ii.  57-60 

Tyrol,  expulsion  of  witches  in  the,  i. 
181,  182;  witches  said  to  make  use 


of  the  hair  cut  in  the,  i.  199  ;  midsum- 
mer customs  in  the,  ii.  267 

Ualaroi,  ceremony  at  initiatory  rites 

in,  ii.  344 
Uapes  of  Brazil,  treatment  of  girls  at 

the  age  of  puberty  in,  ii.  334 
Udvarhely,    harvest    home    in,   i.   370, 

371  ;   ceremony  with   the   last  sheaf 

in,  ii.  9,  48 
Uea,  power  ascribed  to  the  souls  of  the 

dead  in,  i.  132 
Uelzen,  harvest  ceremony  in,  ii.  13 
Uganda,  custom  of  burning  the  king's 

brothers  in,  i.  181  ;  king  of,  and  his 

courtiers,  i.  222 
Ugi,  dread  of  women's  blood  in,  i.  186  ; 

burying  of  cut  hair  in,  i.  202 
Uliase,  sprinkling  the  sick  with  spices 

in,  i.  154 
Unyoro,  kings  killed  in,  i.  218 
Upsala,  sacred  grove  at,  i.  58 
Utch  Kurgan,   sin  eating  in,   ii.    156, 

157 

Val  di  Ledro,  fire  festival  in,  ii.  251 

Vate,  burying  alive  at,  i.  217 

Vegetation,  spirit  of,  in  human  shape, 
i.  87,  88  ;  slain  at  midsummer,  i. 
274,  275 

Veihng,  i.  162,  163 

Venison  not  eaten,  ii.  86,  87 

Vermin,  respect  shown  by  primitive 
people  for,  ii.  129-132 

Vestal  fire,  i.  5 

virgins,  hair  of,  i.  200 

Victoria,  Queen,  worshipped  by  a  sect 
in  Orissa,  i.  41 

Vine,  not  to  walk  under  a,  i.  183 ; 
sacred  to  Dionysus,  i.  321 

Vintage,  Phoenician  custom  at,  i.  365 

Virbius,  legend  of,  i.  6  ;  possible  ex- 
planation of  his  relation  to  the 
Arician  Diana,  i.  362  ;  and  the  horse, 
ii.  62-67  ;  reason  why  he  was  con- 
founded with  the  sun,  ii.  369 

Volders,  threshing  custom  at,  i.  374 

Vorarlberg,  fire  festival  at,  ii.  248 

Vosges  Mountains,  May  Day  customs  in 
the,  i.  76 

Wadai,  veiling  of  the  Sultan  of,  i.  163  ; 

he  must  have  no  bodily  defect,  i.  221 
Waganda,  worship  in,  i.  45 
Walber,  the,  i.  84,  86 
Wallachia,  corn-drenching  in,  i.  286 
Wanika,   the,   believers  in  the  souls  of 

trees,  i.  59  ;  do  not  shed  the  blood  of 

animals,  i.  182 
Wanyoro,    secretion   of    cut   hair    and 

nails  by  the,  i.  203 


INDEX 


407 


Wanzleben,  harvest  custom  in,  ii.  5 

Warts,  cure  for,  ii.  153 

Warua,    the,  not   seen   eating,  i.   160, 

161 
Wa-teita,   the,   their   reluctance   to  be 

photographed,  i.  148 
Water,  kings  of,  i.  53-56 
fairy,    EngUsh    superstition    re- 
garding the,  i.  146 
WatjobaUik,  the,  and  the  bat,  ii.  334 
Weather  kings,  i.  44-46 

omens,  ii.  270,  271 

Weevil,  the,  ii.  129,  130 
Weiden,  harvest  custom  in,  i.  338 
Welsh  custom  of  sin  eating,  ii.  154,  155 
Wends  dancing  round  the  oak-tree,  i. 

72 
Wermland,  custom  among  the  threshers 

in,  i.  378  ;  ceremony  with  regard  to 

the  last  sheaf  in,  ii.  68 
West  African  rain-makers,  i.  20 
Westerhiisen,  reaping  custom  in,  i.  334 
Westphalia,  Whitsuntide  customs  in,  i. 

98  ;  harvest  custom  in,  i.  336  ;  ii.  8, 

9 

Wetar,  men  injured  by  attacking  their 
shadows  in,  i.  142  ;  superstition  con- 
cerning the  blood  of  women  in,  i.  187; 
opinion  of  the  inhabitants  as  to  their 
descent,  ii.  53 

Wheat -bride,  a  name  given  to  the 
binder  of  the  last  sheaf,  i.  346 

dog,  a  name  given  to  the  binder 

of  the  last  sheaf,  ii.  4 

^Vhite  dog,  sacrifice  of  the,  ii.  166 

mice  spared,  ii.  131,  132 

Whitsuntide  basket,  i.  89 

bride,  i.  98 

customs,  i.  76,  77,  80,  87,  88,  90- 

96,  98,  242,  243-247 

flower,  i.  88 

king,  i.  90 

queen,  i.  93 

Wiedingharde,  threshing  custom  in,  i. 

Wild  man,  1.  243,   244,  248,  250,  270  ; 

ii.  41 
Wind,  buying  and  selling,  i.  27  ;_  fight- 
ing the,   i.    28-30 ;  wind-making,    i. 

26,  27 
Wine   the   blood   of  the  vine,  i.    184, 

185  ;  abstention  from,  ib. 
Winenthal,  midsummer   fire  ceremony 

in  the,  ii.  259,  260 
Witchcraft,  protection  against,  ii.  361, 

362 
Witches,  expulsion  of,  ii.  181 
Wolf,  the  corn-spirit  as  a,  ii.  3-7  _ 
Wolfeck,   midsummer    bonfire    in,    ii. 

277 


Women,    superstition    concerning    the 

blood  of,  i.  185-187 

secluded,  ii.  238-242 

and  tree-spirits,  i.  70-74 

Wotjaks,  sacred  groves  of  the,  i.   65  ; 

driving   out    Satan    by    the,   ii.    179, 

180 
Wren,     hunting     the,    ii.      140  -  144 ; 

English     tradition     concerning     the 

hunting  of  the,  ii.  140,  141 
Wurmlingen,  Whit  Monday  custom  in, 

i.  242,  243  ;  threshing  custom  in,  ii. 

21 

Yakut  charm  for  making  wind,  i.  26  ; 

sacrifices,  i.  36 
Yawning,  Hindoo  custom  when,  i.  123 
Yarilo,  funeral  of,  i.  273 
Yorkshire    custom    of    the    clergyman 

cutting  the  first  corn,  ii.  71 
Yoruba,   precautions   against    strangers 

in,  i.  151 
Yucutan  charm  for  staying  the  sun,  i. 

25 ;    New   Year's    festival,    ii.    272, 

273 
Yule  boar,  ii.  29-32,  48 
straw,  ii.  30,  31 

Zabern,  May  Day  custom  in,  i.  77  ; 

harvest  custom  in,  ii.  18 
Zacynthus,  strength  thought  to  be  in  the 

hair  by  the  people  of,  ii.  328 
Zafimanelo,  the,  not  seen  eating,  i.  160 
Zaparo    Indians    of     South    America, 

foods  eaten  and  avoided  by  the,  ii. 

86 
Zapotecs,   high  pontiff  of  the,   i.   113, 

114;    ii.     224;    harvest    custom,    i. 

352,   353  ;  the  tona  of  the,  ii.  332 
Zealand,  custom  at  the  madder  harvest 

in,  i.  378,  379 
Zend  Avesta,  directions  by  the,  concern- 
ing the  clippings  of  hair  and  nails,  i. 

202 
Zeus,  a  man's  shadow  lost  on  entering 

the  sanctuary  of,  i.  143  ;  represented 

by  an  oak  at  Dodona,  ii.  291 
and   Hera,  representation   of  the 

marriage  of,  i.  103 
Zoolas,  qualities  required  for  the  king 

of  the,  i.  219 
Zulu  rain -charm,  i.    19;  belief  in  the 

reflection  as  the  soul,   i.  145  ;  kings 

put  to  death,  i.  218,  219  ;  custom  in 

time  of  disease,  ii.  86  ;  cannibalism, 

ii.  89  ;  girls  secluded  at  puberty,  ii. 

226  ;  the  Ihlozi  of  the,  ii.  332 
Zuni  sacrifice  of  the  turtle,  ii.  95-99  ; 

totem  clans,  ii.  99 
Ziirich,  fire  festival  in,  ii.  250,  251 


Printed  by  R.  &  R.  Clark,  Edinburgh. 


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Date  Due 

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f) 

■     '     V 

BL310.F842V.2 

The  golden  bough;  a  study  in  comparative 

Princeton  Theological  Seminary-Speer  Library 


1    1012  00009  3403 


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